Scene #5495: "The Way to a Better Tomorrow"

Owner	Pose
A2	What little information the infamous Mr. Johnson had given seems to be accurate. Though any good Shadowrunner knows never to assume that Mr. Johnson has told you all that he knows, or all that would be good for you /to/ know, at least nobody was set up for a bomb or something. It's hot, humid, dark, rainy, and altogether a shitty night, reeking of forlornly rotting park vegetation just as much as it does fumes, though it's anyone's guess where the former is. The light pollution is far too intense to make out any stars, never mind the acrid clouds, so it's mostly just the glow of neon and the indoors lights of thousands of office workers staying late that illuminates the street at night, which is already so blaring that it prompts one to wonder why anyone built street lamps in the first place. As promised, the target building (given by GPS, RFID serial, Matrix port, and other, more esoteric means, such as 'street' 'address') looks to be nothing more fancy than an office block, five floors high or so, with underground parking, room for a few hundred people, and nothing much else to speak of. The logo emblazoned over the automatic doors reads "Cosmodyne Solutions", but not in an inviting or advertising way; instead in that way that just screams 'I'm a puppet subsidy owned by a bigger company'. Nobody seems to be /using/ that door, but that seems to be because few people have actually left. It's 10pm and most of the lights are on. The streets aren't terribly busy. The traffic is insanely, even creepily, orderly and regular, and few people want to use the sidewalk (a lot who do have masks on), though apparently not for fear of the plentiful dark and cramped alleys around here. It just leaves people standing out in cold, soggy rain (which feels more like lemon juice by the minute) standing at a glass and polycrete square of worker drone culture, continuous windows all around on every level, parking ramp dipping down from the street, radiating harsh, artificial light into the night, and smelling ever so faintly of ether. A transceiver mast appears to be situated on the roof, judging by the blinking lights, but it's barely visible in the rain, and sways constantly in the wind higher up.
No Brakes	Before hand, No Brakes is heading along to the location with everyone she's contacted in tow in the roadmaster. There's a dog and cat like drone sitting in a locked bay for transport, watching over the crew. The cabin lights up with the image from the dog-like drone's noggin showing a catgirl hologram. "Hey, Brakes here. Enjoying the ride? So, quick recap, the target building is coming up soon and the Johnson gave us a vague target inside. The data from their computer systems." The hologram grins a bit, "Me and our hacker friend here will be heading for any computer rooms, everyone else will run backup, make sure we don't get shot... again. We don't have much intel inside the building so, prep anything you need. Either stun or kill if you have to, just make sure we make it in, to the target and out with the data all in one peice. You guys can do that right?" The hologram pauses a moment and pipes up, "We're just about here. I'm going to park somewhere and release you guys near along with my drones." "Be sure to wear some masks, the pollution around is shit, don't need you guys getting sick during the op." The ride slows down and soon, the back doors open in an alleyway near the target building. "Alright, go. I'll be here. I'll send my Lynx drone with you. Protect it, most of me is in there."
Starbound Flotilla	The STARBOUND FLOTILLA!! Are not here right now, they're busy with other things. But those with keen sensors, canny financial record analytics, savvy hacking, or other such infogathering mechanisms will be able to detect the traces of Starbound Flotilla technologies. A network of local sensors, teleporter infrastructure, and certain automated defense systems have made for a fingerprint that could be traced, and their energy signatures are not especially difficult to identify as foreign. Automated cameras projecting clear and obvious cones of red light as they emit some form os trange scanning energy in pulsating bursts mark entrances. They might trip off that teleportation grid powerup if triggered by some unusual use of one of the entrances. They're centered more around the underground entryways, though. Maintenance passages and pathways from the base of the building to the rooftop have been fitted with mobile laser tripwires and subtle electrical hazards; it's still possible to climb or infiltrate through them, but anyone who does so will need to run a quick gauntlet of platforming challenges if they don't want to set off security systems. The only thing the Flotilla have been utterly unable to help out with is social security. Stealing a security pass or performing some elaborate disguise scheme is going to easily get through these lightly reinforced defenses. The reinforcement itself is also rather light; this was produced on an mass scale by the Flotilla, but it's only one grade above such a building's normal security. Must be why they have the on-call teleportation set up.
Kyoko Takada	The diminuitive soldier who calls herself by some variation of "alpha-three-nine" arrives with the easy, cheap disguise option of "a crappy-looking, standard-issue raincoat" that is appropriately colored like the dirt and grime expected of an urban sprawl's nightscape. She could pass for just about anyone who might conceivably be stuck outside on a night like this, if on the rather short and slight side. The odd bulging aspects of her weaponry are still visible on sight, a need to go anywhere without appearing heavily armed not being frequent on her world. Her mask, on the other hand, is more obviously high-quality. It covers her face entirely, a white-and-gray theme with dull, red eyes, efficient rebreathers set into the front and sides. Social infiltration is not her strong suit. She will not be doing well in that regard. The various bladed instruments she's checking on the ride over are likely a clear indicator of how she will solve problems. On the other hand... "Will opposition come from inside or outside the building? Are we more worried over infil' or exfiltration? I can set up across the street, but, limited coverage."
August Kohler	Inside the Roadmaster, August sits quietly in a seat, wearing a hoodie and a smog mask not unlike those on the streets. Whether it's cover his identity or to prevent him from inhaling smog, who knows. There's a pistol holstered to his side, and he looks...exhausted and weary. Yesterday took a toll on him, and he's still recovering. "Alright. I can serve as a distraction. I'm not sure I'd be able to pull off social stealth around here, and I'm not trained in actual stealth. Loud is my best option, unless you have alternative suggestions." The redhead departs into the alleyway, looking for secondaries entrances: maintenaince tunnels and the like, or a window into a break room.
Sanary Rondel	"It's a pretty nice ride, yeah. Shame everything outside of the ride kinda..." Sanary hums and gestures around her vaguely. "... Is how it is outside." That's probably the most polite way she can say that the outside kinda sucks! Leaning back in her seat, the healer winces a bit as she checks over her axe and shield, moving somewhat gingerly so as to not aggravate wounds from the night before. "Running backup and keeping people distracted ain't anything new for me. I've done this sort of thing a couple of times, you know..." Sanary sounds confident, at least, despite the environment being thoroughly unfamiliar to her. She's dressed up rather well for visibility between the white coat, the fancy eyepatch, and all her gear on top of the flu mask. "Just don't expect me to do any fancy computer shit or sneakin' around. I'm just makin' sure everyone gets outta here in one piece." A-39 gets a curious look,, then an understanding "aah" once she realizes the differences between the two filtrations. And then the vehicle stops, and it's time to get started! Sanary slips into the alleyway not far behind August, keeping watch from where they had come in to see if there's any security or employee-looking people wandering by in case she needs to hide her gear somewhere.
Septette Arcubielle	If physical misery were a sensation Septette is capable of experiencing, she would likely characterize her experience in Seattle thus far as 'miserable'. During the ride, her hair and shawl slowly drip dry. The sogginess only adds to her almost comical appearance: dark sunglasses partially conceal the luminous purple glow of her eyes, and cute little earmuffs hide her triangular metal ear-fins. It's just enough to keep passerby from picking her out as an android at a glance, but the lack of a coat, umbrella or mask (lungs? what lungs?) would likely give her away as some kind of weirdo at best. "I should likely leave stealthy infiltration shenanigans to the rest of you," she remarks cheerfully- at least she's aware of her own limits? "I can't exactly tread lightly, much less talk my way out of being caught. I'll see if I can't act as some kind of diversion; perhaps hang back as reserves case things get loud. I am, at the very least, good at that." A mild understatement, perhaps. Once out of No Brakes' truck, Septette strolls up to the front door of the building- or, at least, the closest thing they'd have to a main entrance- aiming, but perhaps not succeeding, to casually skirt the sweeping cameras' blatant fields of view. She casually opens the door (regardless of whether it's actually locked, though a lock might at least give a satisfyingly noisy crunch) and steps inside with a cheerfully innocent smile on her face...
Starbound Flotilla	August's search for a maintenance tunnel winds up running him headlong into some Starbound Flotilla security. Subtly electrified floors are wired up to power boxes, sweeping laser tripwires run along pre-defined paths, and sudden drops to hazardous areas all make trouble for any effort to get inside through side passages. He's going to have a bit of a stealth gauntlet, and whatever natural quickness he has will be pushed to its limits. A lot of them haven't accounted for the idea that August might possess some rather significant sources of heat; segments of the environment are reinforced with thin metal segments that are highly resistant to blunt trauma, but might give him an option to bypass by slicing through with his supernatural fire.
A2	A little awkward, perhaps, is that back when this mission was scheduled, No Brakes had specifically enlisted the help of the Watch's most prominent muscle at the time. Might still be; depends on who you ask. Either way, in the cabin-most corner of the passenger compartment of the truck, A2 is helps Septette test the suspension, albeit in a far more sullen and quiet manner, dressed in the dramatically concealing ninja cloak she had gotten from Genji a while back to cover her . . . everything, really. She actually just sticks with the truck for the time being, while everyone else gets off. Possibly as insurance to make sure nobody comes after the Rigger herself. Sanary looking in finds that there's nobody of note outside. No security guard wants to stand around under the open sky while it's pissing battery acid and smells of burnt tires. At first glance, there don't /appear/ to be any inside, either, but she can quickly notice that several of the people in business suits visible through the windows are repeating the same patrols over and over again, and pretty much all have the MiB look going with the dark sunglasses. The windows aren't /quite/ so panoramic that she could see what they're armed with, though. Could be a flashlight. Could be a handgun. Could be a laser sword for all she knows. A little odd that the security is dressed to blend in, instead of being obvious as a deterrent, like security guards are supposed to be. The front door is not locked. In fact, it swoops aside with a whoosh of warm, recycled air and a welcoming ping. This clearly isn't one of those 9-5 offices (which are pretty much a myth of ancient legend here). Septette walks in on a quaint corporate lobby that looks like it tried, but not very hard, to look designed for visitors. It's all rose and tan shades of faux-marble walls and checkered floors, with sofas and fake plants so generic she feels herself forgetting at them as she looks at them. It looks /really/ sparse otherwise, but she can detect a lot of electromagnetic activity. AR infrastructure, perhaps? She sets off some kind of metal detector or something pretty much instantly, though it sounds more like the annoying shoplifting alert at a mall rather than an airport alarm. An impossibly bored looking (albeit, very pretty) human lady at the front desk looks up from pushing holographic buttons immediately, stammering in her best 'I'm not ready to sound welcoming yet' tone. "A-ah, hello there! Cosmodyne Solutions would be happy to see you if you have an appointment with an available executive, but please, you need to follow the regulations here! Remove all magical items from your person and we'll check them with security, alright?" Well, she did /say/ security, so it's not like it's all that surprising when she pushes a call button. It's not a 'secret silent alarm' thing. Just a pager. For now.
Starbound Flotilla	Septette's energy signature is nearly impossible for the Flotilla technologies to not pick up because Septette's energy signature is nearly impossible for /any/ technology to not pick up. George once figured out where she was with two crystal radios and a sheet of paper for a bet. The red cones seem to flicker and widen the moment she approaches, and press themselves towards her. It's not an issue of whether they detect her, but how long until they recognize her signature. The precise source of these security systems may reveal itself to Septette in particular when the cones zero in on her core and turn to a shiny purple color, releasing a soft and more familiar "ping!" of recognition. It didn't stay red, or turn green, though...? Turrets nearby, built into the ceiling, unfold and point her way, but whatever recognition they have of Septette means that local security are required to authenticate and confirm actually opening fire on the intruder. They have some familiar design aspects... A laser barrel design that she might recognize, a bulky white 80s-sci-fi aesthetic that seems particularly Albert-like.
August Kohler	As August moves into the maintenance tunnel, he realizes that this isn't going to be an easy entrance - it's trapped. The German drops to his knees when he first spots a tripwire ahead, managing to hear the subtle crackling of electricity on the floor as he drops, before lifting up and overlooking the traps ahead, as well as the tunnels around him. Why go to this level of security? Was the group expected? As he's pondering, August spots a weakened section of metal in the walls, and considers what he can do with it briefly, before raising a mirrored bracelet to his eyes and summoning his Persona. The Tin Soldier raises its gun, setting it ignite, and starts to burn through the wall carefully - August isn't sure he could go /around/ the trap, but perhaps over? When the Tin Soldier is done with the welding job, the wall is now hanging sort of precariously, melted, over the electrified floor. It's absolutely a risky pathway, but August grabs a hold of his Persona, which leaps onto the metal sheet, and above the electrified floor, before dashing to the end and turning off the power box. Next up are trip wires, where August remains holding the Tin Soldier, which tries to carefully leap over them and duck and weave, turning off more power boxes as it finds them and burning holes through the environment to make pathways or tunnels when there seems to be an opening. At one point, a sudden drop is covered by melting a chunk of the ceiling off and dropping it on top as a bridge. If August manages to get to the end, he desummons his Persona, panting a bit from the energy usage, and rubbing his eyes as he tries to figure out where he's ended up, and where he can go from there.
No Brakes	From the Roadmaster, a compartment opens up on the top of it, sending a medium sized flying drone up into the air. INside the cab of the Party Van, No Brakes closes her eyes, taking in a pair of sights... an area map and heat imaging from the aerial drone and the Steel Lynx's eyes, following August carefully, going through his moves as he does it. The drone's feet tap gently as it moves, a small voice coming from it. "I've got radar in the air... trying to get a map of this place." Back at the Roadmaster, the Doberman just paces around the van in a preservation mode, protecting the vehicle and the occupant inside.
Starbound Flotilla	Some of the hazards -- huge pits -- won't deactivate. But turning off the other hazards and leaving the bridges will make sure that August has a sort of an escape route secured, and a path cut through the security for No Brakes to send her Lynx through. It'll still take some agility to get through, and it probably won't be an option for the heavier individuals, but... Well, the powerboxes going down has incremented some kind of power tolerance thing, which inches towards an automatic alarm based on a few displays in the area, but it shouldn't be too hard to manage powerbox useage, especially since the Starbound system is far less hardened against No Brakes and her hacking ability, which makes it perfect that she's coming along.
Kyoko Takada	When Alpha-39 steps off, she leaves behind her big AMR, and heads around and away from the building, not even looking toward it. It's a couple buildings away that she finds a way up that looks reasonably unguarded. Fire escapes normally keep those ladders hung up, but something like a fifteen-foot jump isn't too hard for her with a wall to run up. Once on the rooftop there, she proceeds in a couple of leaps to get on top of the target building, landing in a roll. She comes up in a crouch, waits and listens for anything that isn't the rain, and then starts stepping away from anything like rooftop AC units or other obvious devices. There's a transceiver up here, but she doesn't have the skills to do anything with it reliably. Her sword has a bright glow to it as she unsheathes and activates its power unit, but still makes little noise, operating more by melting through things with a hiss when she presses it against the rooftop below her and begins to cut her way through. Shallowly, at first, being careful of slicing through wiring on her way in. She just needs enough space to get herself into the ceiling crawlway, as a first step, and she is, as mentioned, on the small side.
Sanary Rondel	Once she finishes getting a look at those probably-not-but-totally-are-guards, Sanary backs away from the windows and holds still briefly to suppress a cough, the smog and shittiness surrounding her proving to be rather irritating. With August and No Brakes trying to get in through the maintenance tunnel, Septette hitting the front door, A-39 gooing for the roof, and A2 being generally unnerving, that leaves the healer to... Distract the people inside from those windows! Setting her axe and shield down to the sides of the window so as to not let them be easily seen, she wipes her hair off with her sleeve before moving right up to the window. She takes a moment to prepare her game face, then presses her face and hands right up against that window to stare inside like some sort of overly curious kid. Wide-eye, staring at the people inside, slowly tilting her head to the side and everything. Surely she's not plotting anything doing that and just being a dumb nosy teenager!
Septette Arcubielle	Though her outward composure remains perfectly serene, Septette inwardly flinches when the cameras' lights change to purple. They know her. And, after a moment of inspecting the turrets... she knows them, too. Not well enough to be absolutely certain, but enough to have very sharp suspicions about the Multiversal nature of the security here, and even sharper ones about that security's specific identities. Apex technology. 'Code Purple'- that sense of humor. And recognizing her signature specifically. It's not enough to make her alert the rest of the team- not just yet. But it's enough to start factoring in to her plans. "Of course, miss," Septette responds in her calm synthetic drawl as she reaches into her small leather handbag. People here have artificial voiceboxes sometimes, right? That's a legitimate thing some people have? Maybe she's just a really heavy smoker. That's almost plausible. After a bit of digging around, she pulls out a coil of... fishing line? Glimmering gossamer thread of some kind, and sets it down on the receptionist's desk with her gloved hand. She knows damn well that the 'magical item' they're picking up is her arcane core, but the Ariadne's Threads should scan as magical too. That's at least enough of a pretense to get some security guards up here without their weapons drawn. Then she dials up the charm a bit, smiling tiredly at the receptionist as if searching for a conversational topic. "I do hope I'm not too early. You don't get many clients at this office, do you? Seems like you've got a fairly relaxing job." There's something about her awkward, weary demeanor that's almost painfully authentic and lifelike, making it a little hard to even think about any ulterior motives that might lie behind her banter. It's the deeply practiced tone of someone who's spent an exceedingly long time acting human.
A2	From the drone in the dark and rainy sky, No Brakes can make out A-39's heat blob as it leaps from roof to roof, and then eventually picks out a spot on top of the right building, followed by some severely bright white where she cuts it open. Where she peels away the polycrete, the electrical wiring becomes visible by its miniscule heat signature being exposed to the cold air, and thus easy enough to guide her around it. A-39 can soon enough penetrate her choice of electrical maintenance crawlspace or climate control duct (sadly, for lack of big goofy 1970s air vents). They're absurdly cramped either way, and also hot enough to be dangerous to any maintenance worker. It's like they were built for engineers half her size (and working for a tenth of her pay), but on the plus side, that means absolutely nobody gives a shit to look into them. She can hear (and if coordinating with someone else, be warned of) guards passing the various hatches inside the building on their regular patrol, so they'd believe they would notice someone getting in that way. It's practically a straight, hideously uncomfortable shimmy down five floors. It gets hotter as she goes, and more and more cabling shows up. The lady at the front desk, meanwhile, keeps talking as long as Septette does. She gives a brief, misgiving, glance to the thread, as if not really sure if Septette is yanking her chain, but what's she going to do? Get into a fight with the weirdo probably-cyborg in sunglasses and earmuffs? "On the contrary, most of our executives leave or have left around this time. You might be a little late, I regret to say. Are you here to inquire about any of our products? Or are you looking to invest in our revolutionary 'De-Goblinization' procedure? Of course, you don't look like you'd be volunteering for testing! But even a casual glance at our stock futures shows the trend since the initial announcement, so, best to get on board before it really takes off, no?" Whatever the hell kind of cosmetic procedure that is, Septette will have to find out after an extremely burly man in a suit that barely fits, accompanied by a lankier, paler companion, walk in. The skinny guy brusquely takes hold of the thread, tips his sunglasses down, gives it a look, and apparently decides 'yep that's magical'. Then he turns to Septette and gestures for the rest of it. His big buddy mostly just looks sullen and annoyed, and is very visibly armed with a handgun that is waaaay too big for a human to be using. Then, the lady touches her earpiece, turning sidelong to listen to something. Something about a freaky kid staring in from the street like the place is a candy store, and how the security should get rid of her, based on whether or not she thinks said kid might be mentally ill and how bad the company would look for bullying a kid with a disorder. That might be why there isn't more security. A couple of them have stopped to stare on Sanary's end and are clearly talking into their radios, though she can't hear them through the glass.
A2	A few more minutes into the operation, after a full rotation of the building, No Brakes can get proper thermal scans of people moving about on each upper floor; at least all those but the ones in the very center, to make them easy to keep track of from her truck. There are still over two hundred people at this hour, and about ten on each floor appear to be armed. The Lynx tailing August underground finds itself following him into what at first appears to be a maintenance area or boiler room of some sort, thick, peeling green paint on a shitty, heavy metal door and everything, but after deactivating the power, he can hear an electromagnetic lock thunk inside of it, and see an alarm light die out, and opening it up, he is suddenly assaulted with the sounds of extremely loud, mechanical humming, like being at ground floor with a paper mill or ship turbine. The air that hits his face smells like ozone, ether, antiseptic, and also blood. He's stuck on one side of a laser fence and obvious decontamination chamber (with unoccupied checkpoint and bulletproof glass), beyond which he can see what is very obviously a massive server farm, and beyond that, glass doors to a sterile, bright white medical bay of some sort, complete with sci-fi 'pods'. A-39, on the other hand, can get herself pretty much dumped wherever she wants. /None/ of the ducts or crawl spaces lead directly down here, being isolated by design with thick concrete and metal partitions from the basement that may also be designed as a Faraday cage, judging by some mesh in the middle, but nothing she can't cut through and make her own entrance from. There are people here, of course, but relatively few. Two men and a women in white corporate coats, less 'lab' or 'doctor' and more 'sterile product testing', and a good number of hovering drones tailing them around. A couple of shapes can be seen moving about the medical bay beyond them, but are too hard to pick out from a distance. There are also a number of other access doors that could lead just about anywhere, and just about anyone could be beyond them, but they /appear/ to be locked. Probably.
Sanary Rondel	It's working! Sort of. Although Sanary can't really tell what they're talking about in there, the fact that they are indeed looking her way means that she might be getting some attention from the workers or security sooner rather than later. Not one to drop the act so easily, she steps it up a notch and knocks on the window a few times before waving at the people inside. "H... Hey there!" She calls out, feeling just a smidge silly doing so when she has no expectation that they'll actually be able to hear her. Still, better to take the chance and feel dumb just in case they can hear her and not just see her mask moving slightly. She looks like she's about to say something else, then breaks into a coughing fit and hunches against the window, keeping one hand on the glass before slowly trailing downwards as if she's keeling over. That should get some heartstrings tugged at and some attention sent her way! Of course, Sanary's not /really/ going to try and fall over. The floor's nasty with all the rain, and in this alleyway, who knows who's used this spot as a toilet? Alas, balance isn't Sanary's strong point, and as she settles into a sideways-leanings quat, she actually does end up tipping over and falling on her side. At least she won't have to try very hard to look sickened if anyone does come by.
Kyoko Takada	Alpha-39 has the choice of utility routes down, but they must have been made more for drones more than for human workers. Whether she can get down or not, it'll be hard for anyone else to get back up, which limits the usefulness of the route if August is already making his way successfully in. Her mask gives her some limited AR capabilities, and she hooks up with No Brakes to get the requested data on guard patrols, even if only as a map on her HUD. She has her own heat-vision with the thing, but not to any really sophisticated degree, and seeing through walls is pretty much off the table. She is carrying an extendable mirror, but even that can get spotted quickly in an otherwise sterile environment. Infiltrating office buildings that aren't half-destroyed is a bit outside her experience. With the real-time intel, she makes her way through the ceiling crawlspace without entering the inter-floor maintenance shaft, and picks a place off the beaten path, not caring whether it's a closet or just a meeting room that isn't seeing any use at this hour of the night. What matters is that no one will be there and no lights will be on to catch her lifting up the ceiling panel and dropping down. If at all possible, and with the regularity of corporate buliding construction patterns she expects it will be, it'll be directly above another room of similar disuse, and another, all the way down. Once down, one of her many knives replaces her sword to similar use. Just four or five floors to go, and then she'll have to figure out how to link up with the basement.
Septette Arcubielle	Septette feigns surprise and incomprehension for a moment at the pale man's request. The other magical stuff? Oh, this other magical stuff? Rather than hand him the rest of the threads in her bag- she does still need an escape plan!- she simply removes her cloak, as casually as if disrobing in front of three strangers were an everyday part of her life, and reveals a hideously skeletal metal body with no room for human pretense whatsoever. And she smiles. Not the bloodthirsty gape or unnerving rictus of a killer, but the small, disarming smile of a friend. Let's see how many other guards that pulls in. One of her fins twitches under her earmuffs as she listens in on the earpiece conversation, and her smile widens ever-so-slightly. Yesss. Good job, Sanary. You're the best mentally handicapped kid. You go.
August Kohler	Well, that sure was an obstacle course, but both August and No Brakes' drone got through. Through to arrive in a...boiler room? No, some sort of quarantine. August covers his face, trying to use the smog mask to block out the smell, as he looks at the laser fence in front of them. He takes roughly a minute checking it and discussing with the group possible ways forward, before deciding to take the quick one. With another glance at that bracelet, the Tin Soldier reappears, and points its gun at the emitters of the laser fence. Counting out loud to the group, he readies the shot...and begins blasting through the emitters with supernatural bullets, as well as fire if that would be more useful. As soon as the lasers are down, he's dashing forward, Tin Soldier first, to rush the checkpoint and try and get to the server farm. "Alright, we're loud. Let's get this done." August says, as he does not desummon his Persona, instead keeping it in front of him as a tank. "How long will it take you once you have access to the farm?"
A2	Coordinating along with No Brakes, avoiding being seen goes from difficult to actually kind of trivial for A-39. Of course, sooner or later, people are going to notice all the holes in everything (especially when the rainwater makes its way through the maintenance crawls), but the idea is not to be around for that long anyways. Linking up with the basement is easier said than done, though. It seems like everything above it is intentionally segregated as much as possible, so one would have to enter from underground in the first place. Security design to make it so that people can't enter the building normally and then slip in. Of course, nothing is stopping her from cutting her way down there too. No Brakes' Lynx is now in a position to feed her that data as well, regarding where she would be cutting into. tNobody inside the office looks particularly moved by Sanary's plight, though. Most of them just look like dead-eyed wage slaves and barely notice a dumb teen collapsing outside in the rain (which, unfortunately, tastes like vinegar and sulfur) over the glare of their computer monitors. One of the guards decides to inform the secretary that someone is going to go scrape her off the sidewalk so she doesn't die in front of the building and leave a bad smell come morning. Cold. It does result in a pair of armed suits coming out to haul her away though, both of them actually carrying goddamn submachine guns of all things. The scene Septette causes in the lobby is much bigger. Smile or not, the woman at the front desk jumps back and screams, covering her mouth and running to the back wall as fast as her impractical heels can carry her. Both security personnel draw their weapons and point them at Septette without hesitation, calling for additional assistance over the radio. That entails six more on the floor; two are busy with Sanary. Most of them are human, with a couple obviously being too large, too muscular, and too tusked to fit in, and one being, well, about the right size to fit into the ducts. All of them have firearms of some description (and not police 9mms), but the short one appears to have some kind of . . . tablet computer? And another has his gun holstered and some kind of talisman in his hands instead. She is immediately bludgeoned with loudly yelled demands to put her hands behind her head and to lie down on her front, with the kind of excessively noisy and rapid tone that comes from someone who was trained to absolutely never fuck around. Someone mentions something about an 'HTRT', then someone says something about a 'contractor'.
A2	August gets antsy, shoots out the emitter stand on the laser fence, and the whole thing sputters, sparks, and dies, immediately sending the trio in the next room into a panic. One of them runs toward the medical bay, one slams an alarm on the wall next to him, and the third busies herself with the computer as if she's desperately trying to delete her internet browsing history after someone asked to use her PC to look something up. The hover drones (four in number) automatically respond to the intrusion, lining up between August and the staff as soon as he passes the fence and the checkpoint, extruding machine guns and pointing obvious laser sights in his direction. "UNAUTHORIZED INTRUSION DETECTED. SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY OR THIS FACILITY WILL RESPOND WITH LETHAL FORCE. YOU ARE INTRUDING UPON AZTECHNOLOGY(TM) JUDICIAL TERRITORY, AND SUBJECT TO AZTECHNOLOGY(TM) SOVEREIGN LAW. YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF AZTECHNOLOGY'S(TM) GUARANTEED CORPORATE RIGHTS. REPEAT: SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY OR THIS FACILITY WILL RESPOND WITH LETHAL FORCE. A HUMAN RESOURCES AGENT WILL BE PRESENT SHORTLY." Back on the street, the van rocks violently as an extra person rockets out from the back, left to bounce on its suspension as she crashes in through the same entrance August had taken and begins rapidly ploughing through the trail he had left. He can hear those super-heavy stiletto heels rapidly growing louder behind him. "YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY. TEN. NINE. EIGHT."
Sanary Rondel	Someone's coming! Surely it'll all be worth it when they drag her inside out of that nasty rain and dirty sidewalk. Any second now, these armed guards will be making a turn towards the building and... ... They're not making that turn at all, are they? Sanary takes another moment to get her brain prepped, then tries to put on a younger and much less rough animal-wrangler voice than her usual after coughing one more time and wiping her mouth off. "Nnh... Eh? Th-thanks for the help. Where are we going...?" Yes, she's going to try and sound like a sick girl now. A fairly heavy one at that, sure, but... Dammit, get those heartstrings tugged at already! She even coughs a few moer times for good measure, although it might start to seem less endearing and more disgusting weird contagious at this point. "Do you have any... Uh. Clean water or towels in there?"
Starbound Flotilla	Alarms are going off everywhere. At the lobby. At the basement. Hmmm, where does the Flotilla show up? Well, monitoring drones are lighting up with a building TELEPORT CHARGE! The local Starbound teleport network is lighting up like crazy. Down here, where there's good access, though, No Brakes is presented with a unique opportunity. There's a number of teleport outlet points throughout the building that will let the Starbound Flotilla jump in, and it looks like they may be targeting the basement! But if No Brakes can jump onto that computer and use her hacking prowess, she could easily redirect that incoming teleport to anywhere else in the building, before setting to work on the /real/ meat of the machine's content.
A2	Out in the rain, the two men help up Sanary alright (eventually), but that mostly involves picking her up under the arms and dragging her several alleys away, far enough where a corpse wouldn't look bad on them, and coincidentally far enough away that they can't hear the alarms going off. One of them stops briefly when she has the audacity to ask for towels, pulling out a palm-sized scanner. "Corporate SIN. If you're not Aztechnology registered, you don't have any rights here, kid. SIN or get lost."
No Brakes	Inside the APC: No Brakes grins, leaning back in her chair as everything unfolds. Ah, such fun... such excitement. Such... craziness. This is all well and good for the rigger... now, to get what she came for with the help of everyone else. "Alright, let's do this." Back at the Lynx, it backs up slightly, when August shoots out that emitter. "Give me thirty minutes... fifteen if you want to rush me." the drone speaks out with No Brakes' voice, rushing out of the new hole with a gatling gun at the ready. "We won't comply. Sorry!" comes the drone's words, rushing towards the computer and shoving its tail right into it. It soon sits and the eyes go blank, the gatling gun turret on it goes into a scanning mode and soon... Floating inside the matrix there, the figure grins, "Okay, let's see, we'll adjust this and this... and this.. Delete this. Modify this..." the floating girl in the machine starts fucking around with things, adjusting the data to make the StarFlot's teleport split them up. Some to where A2 is and some to where Septette is located! "I think that'll do!"
Septette Arcubielle	This wasn't wholly unexpected, Septette reflects as someone nearly sprains their wrist by pistol-whipping the back of her head, but it was definitely less-than-optimal. But at least the people up here in the lobby are stuck in here with her, and not with August or- heaven forbid- the other android. They are relatively safe. Maybe in a few months, she notes dryly as long curved blades unfold from her forearms, they'll be thankful for that. She sways to one side, looking unbalanced for a moment by the blow to her head. 'Looking' is the operative word; her body twists and lurches around invisible rays that mark the likely lines of fire if any of the men were to fire now, minimizing her profile to their collective aim. One blade whips back to strike over her shoulder, skewering one man's gun-arm at the elbow and flash-cauterizing the wound with a sickening sizzle. The other whips out at the mage's talisman, likely clipping his fingers and ripping it from his grasp as she ducks low. "Surrender and live," she says in a loud yet clear voice. "Violence will be met with violence. Am I understood?"
August Kohler	Well, that made things dangerous, but August accepts that. They're in quicker, and this will be over quicker. As soon as the hover drones line up, August pauses, Tin Soldier standing idly. Normally, he'd just shoot, but he hears very familiar shoes. Instead, he starts countung aloud with the drones. "Seven. Six. Five. Four, three, two..." And at the last second, the Tin Soldier's gun is raised, and a massive spurt of fire is shot at the drones, trying to melt through their hardware and disable them, as August and the Tin Soldier begin moving to reposition in between No Brakes and the servers, letting someone get close enough to hear him. "One. Right on schedule, A2. It's showtime." As he moves to stand guard over the Lynx, August shouts again to those still near the servers. "Down on the ground, don't move, don't raise a weapon, and you don't get hurt. I can further guarantee an escape out of this shithole if you provide very valuable information on what the hell is going on down here, and why there's a secret basement lab complete with the wonderful smell of blood." A tap of August's foot, as he awaits more security, or any surviving drones, to come at him.
Sanary Rondel	Sanary's actually looking a smidge irritated by the time the guards finish dragging her off, stumbling a bit while steadying herself after not standing on her own for so long. "Nnh... Corporate whonow? Oh, like the tour guide said!" A cough, and then she looks between the guards before peering and pointing at the scanner as if wanting to touch it. All a ruse to try and not get them to notice her channeling energy into her eye, of course. "H... Hey, what's that thing?" She asks with the same curious tone as before, waiting for the ideal moment to fire. Should neither of the guards actually notice that she is gathering magical power in her eye, she'll wait until one of them actually tries to say something before firing a heat laser from said eye right between them and creating decently large explosion!
Kyoko Takada	Alpha-39 could go join August, but that would, as she'd put it, be the kind of thing a bloody amateur would do. Too many cooks in the kitchen isn't her kind of metaphor, but you can definitely have firepower that's too concentrated. That said, she still has a reason to open a route to the basement, even if it'll take more work to cut through an area that wasn't supposed to be connected at all. How much more work depends on whether this was an armored shelter kind of deal, in which case this could be interminably slow, or just "we didn't connect the stairs or the elevators." Once she does make it, she'll pop a look through, and then start throwing lines to the roof, pulled from her kit. It'll make climbing out a bit quicker, once there's call for that. She can more or less just jump and drag herself up, but even a crude zipline is a help there. It never hurts to have two routes out when enemy reinforcements are closing in.
Starbound Flotilla	The local turrets are lighting up at Septette the moment the group launches into combat. Code Purple is pragmatic; the Starbound Flotilla aren't exactly going to compromise their software with some kind of vulnerability to Septette, but they aren't going to mark Septette unfriendly. The moment there starts to be a violent exchange with the clients, they open up with a barrage of laserfire, fast like gatling guns and, thankfully, not causing hearing damage to those poor employees. She'll need to deal with those! It might be tough, unfortunately, considering how one of the nearby Starbound teleport-beacons just lit up in a flickering way, and dumped some Starbounders here! George, Biteblade, and Pavo are all beamed in at once, and though they're confused a moment, they enter the fray rather immediately. "Ssskeleton frieeeend!" "Dammit Bones, I was hoping this Code Purple was gonna be a false positive!" "Avast, lass! I've not a clue what yer plan is, lass, but we've got a paycheck to earn!" Biteblade's already launching a stream of heavy-impact arrows at Septette, while George moves in with heavy power gauntlets to deliver a barrage of electrified punches and grapples, and Pavo launches up and around the ceiling with a swinging cutlass and flintlock combo! They know Septette can more than take the pain, they don't need to go nonlethal even on a friend. They're not hesitant, but that's mostly because Seft got split off from them; if she were here, there's no doubt that she'd be dealing with two instead of three.
A2	Septette going from skeleton stage 1 to skeleton stage 3 gets a fresh scream from the secretary, who runs as fast as she can into the deeper building without falling over. One of the guards screams as well, but from the pain of having a superheated piece of sharp metal shoved through his joint, collapsing onto the floor and clutching his elbow. The others, rather than instantly open fire on muscle memory, fan out around Septette, backing up significantly at the sight of the melee weaponry, and partially surrounding her. They don't seem to be doing much of anything but achieving a standoff, until one says: "High Threat Response Team ETA five minutes! Contractors are on their way right now! Nobody try to be a hero!" When those 'contractors' teleport in, though, the little dwarf fiddling on his computery-thing seems to have a different idea of what hero means, though. A wired connection from his skull to the hardware sends a wireless signal to the lobby that immediately clamps the windows and door with heavy ceramic shutters, and swivels additional security guns from adjacent areas to face into the lobby on little rotating wall panels. The doors leading further in whine as they become electrified, and what is obviously a gas dispenser pops out of the ceiling, though it doesn't do anything, since someone probably realizes it's useless. It might be pertinent to ask why the lobby of a cosmetics testing lab is built like a killbox. It also might be worth asking what the sudden rush of magical energy Septette feels from the talisman in the mix has just done. Down in the basement, the drones are engulfed in the psychic flamethrower before they can fire. Whoever the poor programmer was responsible for them, he can be excused for not writing AI that could recognize Jungian ego legs as active weapons. The lot of them fall smoking out of the air, sputtering and whirring on the ground, though one manages to pump several rounds into the floor, and another blows up when its ammo cooks off. This lets No Brakes plug right in, scrambling the teleporters with ease, and quickly giving her full access to the registry. Supposedly, the Paydata Mr. Johnson wants so bad was under R&D. None of the white coats seem keen on trying to stop them. They panic immediately, holding their hands over their heads and freezing in place when the gunfire starts, though taking several seconds to understand August and kneeling down. One of them at least is brave enough to sputter: "Th-this is a surgical facility! O-of course it smells like blood! Don't shoot anything else! You'll compromise life support in the theatre! We have patients there you know!" He sure doesn't sound like he's lying, given how blatantly scared he is, but he's sweating bullets all the same. A little carbon-y zip sounds out as a chunk of the ceiling comes away in the corner and incredibly convenient rappel wiring drops through. Now A-39 has a direct line of sight (and ear) to the mess in the basement, where her AR interface synched to the flying drone can pick up additional heat signatures closing in, as well as see police lights flashing just a few streets away.
Starbound Flotilla	Dumping Seft, Moonfin, and Albert out near A2, which is to say, in the August path. This means A2 and the half of the Starbound Flotilla are likely to wind up duking it out in that side maintenance passage. This means that August's escape route is half cutoff, but No Brakes DID effectively make sure the group couldn't interfere with the main team! A2 will be able to hold them back from the underground area pretty well. But if they're going to escape unscathed, it may suit the group to be able to set up some kind of distruptive ambush; anyone still sneaking around might find this a good time to get something worked out!
A2	Sanary is, by serendipitous accident, suddenly (visibly) locked out of the building, and stuck with the smallest problem by far. The two suits look to each other as if to say 'is this bitch for real?' before one pulls out actual handcuffs, and then both of them are tossed to the curb by the laser-eye explosion, one of whom smacks his head against a parked car's fender and blacks out, and the other of which loses his gun down a storm drain. She's also in a prime position to see the police vehicles coming up, about to drive right past her. There's four of them in total, and all of them are heavy APC vaguely comparable to the one the team used to get here, all black and yellow and emblazoned with a stylized 'KE' logo. They're going stupidly fast. No squad cruisers among them. August quickly hears the sound of emphatic swearing echoing from behind him, followed by excessively loud concrete shattering and metal shearing rumbles and screams, along with the distinctive sounds of clashing swords and surging electricity, only punctuated by the roar of a collapsing wall, and an enthusiastic 'Fuck!'
August Kohler	Upstairs, it sounds like they're running out of time. August hears A2 dealing with reinforcements, and grits his teeth, pacing around No Brakes before turning towards the white coats, stepping away briefly to see if he can't get a glance at the labs or close enough to hear anything. "Hell of a setup for a surgical facility. What /type/ of surgery? Why would someone come down here to raid this place?" There's a pause, and then the Tin Soldier raises its gun up, to simply remind them that it's here. "Forget your NDAs. We both know they're not relevant right now. What are you working on?" Regarding an escape path, August considers, and then glances to the white coats again. "What exits out of this floor are there besides the maintenance?"
Kyoko Takada	A-39 has nothing more to do down there. August has it covered (probably). She gets up, but doesn't go all the way to the roof. They've gone loud, and that's a getaway route. That means not calling attention to it until they need it, and she has a good feeling they /will/ need it. She gets up to the second floor (just to be on a different floor from Septette), cracks open the door of the room she went in, looks outside with a mirror attached to her SMG, and then rushes out if the hall is clear, closing the door behind her and ready to shoot anything that gets in the way. This includes "a window," as her goal is to burst out of the building, drop to street level, and get back to to where she'd left her anti-materiel rifle. She's going to need that to deal with an incoming APC.
Septette Arcubielle	Septette laughs, softly and without malice, as the Flotilla Captains warp in. This is nice- no, really, it's nice. Not only is she doing a greater service to her teammates by occupying fully half the Flotilla, including by far its most threatening (and flowery) combatant, but she calculates a vastly lower chance of accidentally killing them than she'd have of killing the guards here. Of course, they are her friends, too. But that is a minor wrinkle, and one they can smooth over between them later. "I'm sorry, but by the time I realized that you guys were tied up in this, it was too late for me to back out and keep contract. You know how important being trustworthy is to me, don't you?" Strange words from someone with a man screaming on the floor behind her! Still, she gleefully responds in kind to the Flotilla's aggression: flintlock-and-cutlass blows rake across her spine before she throws out a heavy back-handed slash at Pavo in the killroom-lobby's confined space, deflecting one of Biteblade's arrows off of her arm with a dramatic spray of sparks. George rushes in a moment later, and she grabs the gauntlets with her bare hands, sending rivulets of slagged copper pouring down her forearms as they're electrocuted. Then she twists around him in a peculiar sort of grappling dance, using his signature to trip the turrets' friend-or-foe identification and halt their firing for a moment before trying to slam him into Biteblade!
Sanary Rondel	Sanary scoffs lightly as the suits get tossed around by the explosion, feeling little sympathy after they respond with handcuffs and guns. She gave them a chance to be kind! The sight of the APCs coming around the corner gives the healer a kick in the ass to not just linger, though, and she walks briskly over to the disarmed guard. "Hey. Hey. You know what the best part is?" She waits a moment just to see if he'll give her any sort of expecting look or response, then kicks him in the gut before breaking into a run. "I was never sick, asshole!" That felt good. Now to actually do her job. With the APCs just passing her by, she somehow decides that the only responsible thing to do is fire off /another/ laser over the vehicles. As with the guards, she detonates it in another flashy explosion near the vehicles, jumps once to make herself a little more visible while pointing and laughing like a madwoman, then bolting in the opposite direction. She does pause to look behind herself every now and then to see if they're following her, of course.
No Brakes	With data safely downloaded into the Rigger's head, the drone disconnects from the system and turns to August and A2. "I got what I need." suddenly, the Radar drone starts giving data back to everyone... "Drone control returning. I got my radar back. Shall we get out of here?" the drone doesn't smile, though inside the APC she does. "Clear the way and let's get out of here, we just need to go up." she comments idly to the ones around her. "Shall we get going?" The Lynx's gatling gun traces some of the people inside, ready to fire if they make a move, "I'll lead when you're ready, August."
Starbound Flotilla	Pavo slams back from the slash, spraying metal from the gash cut across her torso armor, sliding hard to a stop in a three-point landing with her sword plunged into the ground. "BITEY!" She calls out. "HAMMERTOSS!" When George is launched off his feet, his own subtle grappling skills come into play quickly and aggressively; he can't pull out of the grapple, but he can pull into a way less dangerous position to get thrown at Biteblade with, using a little risky muscle-straining reorientation. Biteblade tosses her bow to one side, leaps up TOWARDS the attack, and grabs George's hands in mid air, causing them to swing elegantly around each other once before launching Biteblade forward and George off towards Pavo herself! The physics of that got a little wonky with those microthrusters getting involved. Biteblade herself draws a pair of daggers and goes to pounce hard on Septette and stab at her repeatedly, happily shouting, "Ssskelton friend can't take turnsss thisss time!!" George, meanwhile, gets to work on helping Pavo up off her ass, administering a shot of medical fluids with one hand, and firing a heavy pistol with his other. And of course, he has to do that in tandem with Pavo's own Erchius flintlock, an attempt to overwhelm her! "Yeah, I am definitely never gonna understand that trust thing! It works for Flotilla situations but that's one hell of an edge case to go for!" He shouts, firing as quick as he can while he tries to yank Pavo back onto her feet.
A2	From the second floor, Kyoko's only opposition is the last guard to round the corner with his fellows in the process of rushing for the elevator, where probably all four other floors are rushing to ground to either trap and surrounded Septette further, or retrieve ther buddies still there. He catches sight of the mirror, yells "Hey!", raises his own SMG, and then is caught in the chest by a whole spray of bullets. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his fashionable suit appears to be high-quality ballistic material, but that much just equates to 'will wake up in the hospital later' under a closed ranged burst of accurate fire. She crashes right through the window (thankfully not locked on the second floor) and rolls out to street level, seeing where Sanary has taken out the only other security personnel, and also the same lights and hearing the same sirens. It's a straight shot to the van and her AMR, but the vans are moving too fast to get there in time; that is until Sanary fires her laser again, and causes her target to swerve into the opposite lane to avoid it. The driver has impressive reflexes, since the whole thing doesn't topple over, but it's wasting precious time having to cut back, and, more importantly, someone in the rear kicks open the back doors, and a pair of armoured hands blind-fire a 60 round automatic spray at her on the sidewalk, being accurate enough that the weapon clearly has a gun-cam. This is the police?
A2	In the basement, the guy August is yelling at mostly just gets indignant. "What are we- what are we WORKING ON?! You idiot! You're sabotaging a revolutionary surgical procedure for underprivileged minorities! Cosmodyne is the pioneer in Aztechnology's patented de-goblinization cosmetic therapy, where hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised orcs and trolls, discriminated against for their metatype, have hope of reducing or eliminating their non-human physical traits and securing better jobs and a better way of life! Do you have any idea why that's valuable?! The demographics?! We have patients here who are bravely volunteering to help us refine the experimental process in lieu of monetary payment, and if you keep shooting things up, there won't /be/ any!" One of the other scientists isn't interest though. He mostly just looks around fretfully and moans "Where are the rest of the drones?! Where's Knight Errant?! What's going on?!" The Lynx flipping through the computer terminal can find the paydata pretty easily. The folders are neatly organized, and not incredibly well encrypted, and most of the building's processing power is going to security programs right now. Even casually listening to August, the data on the surgery is easily located under R&D/beta stage/invasive/metahuman testing/, and seems to comprise very large volumes of surgical logs, test results, confidential client medical information, before and after checks, recordings and photos, and requests and blueprints for and of proprietary and generic equipment. Something may catch her eye on that list, though, briefly visible in all the mess the female white coat was trying to close and lock and shut down at the last second. It looks like a half-finished materials order, last edited ten minutes ago. ======================================= - General anasthesia FLD (mix N3/N6) 800cc - General anasthesia GS (mix N1/N8/N9) 1200cc - O- donor blood 80L (cold storage, transfusion ready) - 33mm Replacement blade, auto-scalpel (40)x2 - 400VA charger x2 - 2.2kW Cauterization laser, surgical x1 - 1/128" Reciprocal saw filament - A-TECH retinal implant recorder x12 - A-TECH vestibular affixed recorder x12 - ABX brand immunosuppressants, cyberware-grade 1400mg - 40mr streaming uplink and 200VA UPS x6 - CLASS C SUBJECT/AWAKENED PERSONNEL USE ONLY: - Athame, obsidian, whalebone (troll-standard) x1 - Thurible, basalt/brass 40mgc x4 - Class 4 anticoagulant-analgesic (RESTRICTED SUBSTANCE) 300cc - Acid, HCl (sealed) 60L - Graphene non-spill tarp 40^m x2 - KE Surplus MAG-lock full-body restraints (set) x2- - Note: soundproofing on west wall appears to be experiencing corrosion. Replace ASAP. =======================================
Kyoko Takada	A-39 does not particularly care whether that guard gets up again, as long as he doesn't double back the way she came and do anything to her zip-line. She's busy feeling the regret of not taking her AMR with her, but rolling quietly across rooftops while carrying a gun of that relative size to her is somewhat risky, without cybered up legs to take the standing shock. Them's the breaks. Fortunately, Sanary bought her second. She expects Sanary to deal with the fire coming her way as a result. Her job is to make the rest of that sprint for the getaway van, grab her gun, throw herself down where she barely can take the KE APC in her field-of-view, set the stock to her shoulder and fire a round through the weakest-looking spot that intersects with where a driver should be sitting. Maybe he'll be as lucky as the last guy, but again, A-39 does not care.
Sanary Rondel	A-39's sudden arrival has Sanary looking over with a blank stare, chuckling after a moment and realizing who she's looking at. "Oh. Hey there! We ready to go, then?" She chimes while continuing to just hoof it, her eye widening at the sight of back doors opening with a freaking MACHINE GUN bearing down on her. "Heads up! Er... Down!" The healer swerves towads A-39 for a moment before turning abruptly to head down an alley instead of running down the street like a shmuck, although she still gets grazed and hit head on by a good dozen bullets by the time she gets out of the street. The healer's still got plenty of magic in her to stem the bleeding even while she's on the run, but those bullets are probably going to be stuck in there until she can get to safety first. Of course, getting to safety means not getting shot at more and reaching No Brakes' vehicle. Sanary's going to take random alleyways to try and throw off her pursuers, but who knows if she's going to actually get to the vehicle before getting chased down first? If she does get to the car, though, then she'll set up position in the back of the truck to act as a sapient healing and explosion-shooting sentry!
August Kohler	As the white coat starts shouting at August, the Persona's gun is trained on him. August just listens, going over what he's saying, and then glances to No Brakes as he asks her through a radio what the payload is. After a few moments of conversation, he bites his lip, and then immediately points the gun at the nearest power source. "Sorry, but either you're being mislead or you're scum. Non-consentual experimentation, really? No survivors? I'm burning this place to the ground." And then, the gun fires. It starts on power sources. Then, August scans around for anything that seems to be core to this project, and starts burning things. Everything. The lab techs don't escape his notice. Anyone who tries to interfere with him or protect the research is shot once in the torso, a quick reaction as August gets even angrier and begins to move to the escape rope. As he goes to climb, he calls over. <"If you have a chance to damage this building, erase it. We're not going to let this stand.">
A2	A-39 has just barely enough time. Whoever tought the police here in their 'bullshit APC stunt driving course' must have been pretty good, because she only just has the sights up when the armored core just cuts across the divider and comes straight at the building. A single shot smashes through door latch, angles upward into the seat, punches into the passenger compartment, and rips out the top of the truck. The windshield is splattered top to bottom in dull red, and the vehicle swerves sidelong and smashes into a street lamp, which snaps off at the base. Several moments later, figures begin climbing out of the back. A couple of them look wounded, and two are carrying one who is clearly unconscious, but there are at least a half-dozen still on their feet, covered head to toe in heavy tactical armour, tinted visors and ballistic plating and all. The KE logo is stenciled on everything, including a light machine gun and 40mm grenade launcher the two largest are carrying. 'Police'. Sanary is already well away by then, though, the call had come from the building, and the sounds and tremors of combat are still raging from within it. They visually sweep the street, but only two split off for the direction the AMR round had come from (probably figuring it the same shooter as the explosion) and the other four stack up on the shuttered doors, using the radio to coordinate it being opened from the inside for a sudden breach. The first two do, at least, toss a smoke grenade down the alley to cover their advance, full of enough reflective chaff that A-39's thermal vision is like trying to pick them out in the snow. Of course, the same applies to them.
Septette Arcubielle	All things considered, Septette is fighting with a remarkable amount of restraint- under normal circumstances she might blast the incoming Floran with a full-fledged fireball, but a millisecond's thought indicates that'd roast some of the guards too, maybe even set the lobby on fire. Unwise, for someone with her goals and motivations. Instead, she brings up both her arms to block Biteblade's pouncing lunge- and gets stabbed through the hydraulic tubing of her arms for her trouble, forming a dramatic cris-crossing splatter pattern of black fluid on the wall behind her. "Hah! This is your killroom, and my odds aren't great... but I don't need to beat you to 'win'." She shoves back hard against Biteblade while her opponent's in an unbalanced state, trying to fling her away and gain some much-needed space. That space doesn't come in time to prevent the first few pistol shots from raking her side, inflicting crackling and sparking wounds on the components inside her torso. A fraction of a second later, however, she twists to minimize her profile relative to George and Pavo, blocking further shots with the flat of one of her blades and trying to force them onto the defensive by firing a hail of icy shards at the huddled pair. But abruptly, the machine-gun-like hail of magical projectiles halts, and Septette lowers her hand. "One moment, please." A bizarre request to be making at a time like this! But she dashes over to the desk and scoops up her Ariadne's Threads, twitching one ear-fin as she assesses the tactical situation on the radio. "There's no purpose to my remaining here for the completion of the job," she says, primarily addressing George and Pavo- they're the ones most likely to listen. "Either you can allow me to teleport out uninterrupted and fulfill your contract that way, or we can beat the shit out of each other for the same result at greater cost. Your choice." With that, she pulls the skein of threads taut between her fingers and starts to shimmer. It'll take several seconds for the teleport to conclude, and it'd be pretty easy to interrupt her and disrupt it in that time... but does it really make sense to prevent her from escaping, at this point? She's not even carrying anything of value.
A2	"Non- WHAT?!" the extremely sweaty man yells back at August. "Who the hell is telling you nonsense like that?! Everything has been followed down to the letter! There are pages and pages of extensive contracts and waivers every potential- this facility is under extraterritorial jurisdiction! You have no idea what you're doing, or whom you're making enemies of!" He pretty quickly covers his ears when August starts shooting. His two friends mostly just curl up and scream. The area is chock full of high-voltage cables, fuel lines, coolant recyclers, and closets for security equipment that appears to have been left inactive (Somehow. Surely pulling that one power switch didn't shut off all the drones and guns too, right? That'd be stupid.). It either sparks, catches fire, or spews volatile gas pretty easily, and soon there are bolts of electricity and clouds of decomposing oxides flying around amidst all the screws and bolts and papers and pens. A handful of small fires start immediately, and they rapidly begin to grow. Not so fast that the fire alarm doesn't go off, at least. No doubt the emergency services will be here along with the private security firm, where the people upstairs can get out after the extraction. Most of the flammable stuff is downstairs, not where the 200+ salarymen and women are. The medical bay doors open as August gets a hold of the abseiling line and starts climbing through all the convenient holes A-39 had left. What look to be two nurses and a man in some kind of dark, religious attire rush out, the former with blood still on their gloves. When August's back is to them, the entire crowd bolts for the exits, running for their lives to escape the fire. Before the smoke becomes asphyxiating and the heat intolerable, August can stick around just long enough to see the west wall crumble, and a large, military-type drone go flying through it, its twisted spine snapped and sparking as it tumbles along the floor. A huge chunk of security electronics, ripped straight off a wall, goes next to it. He can barely see A2 through the smoke, stepping through the breach whilst dripping synthetic blood on the floor from a handful of shallow wounds. She has her personal HUD screen open, set to one of the stolen videos. Then the smoke becomes far too thick to see through. All he can hear is her yelling. "What the- . . . what the /hell/ is this?! Who the fuck do you think you are?!" All six of them try to talk over each other at once, growing louder and louder, and then August will just have to use his imagination for the sounds of buzzing air and high-velocity wet splattering that follow.
A2	Out in the lobby, the men in suits only begin to move when Septette breaks away and starts talking. The second she grabs the thread, one of them shouts "NOW!" and the dwarf hits a command on his Deck. The front door shutters retract at high speed, and the glass doors behind it shatter inwards. The shards hit the ground at the same time the flashbang does, practically right at her feet, followed immediately by a hail of bullets, but by the time the Knight Errant team crowds in, it's already too late. She's gone.
Kyoko Takada	On seeing the vehicle swerve, A-39 doesn't take the time lining up another shot. She twists back around, rifle loaded but not ready to fire, getting behind the corner she'd shot out from and slinging it to grab for a grenade. Her first thought was for a concussive, but the smoke would muffle the flash and she's not sure the bang will get through that armor. That leaves the more immediately lethal option, and she mutters "Frag out," into her mask's mike as she listens, make a quick timing judgment to estimate the Knights Errant position, and tosses the little black pineapple. That done, she hoofs it back to the escape APC and stands on the back edge, SMG back in one hand and whatever she can stabilize herself with in the other. "Ready to go."
No Brakes	With the APC being ridden by not only A2 but now A-39 and Sanary, the Doberman moves to hop into the back and charge up, more human people are there to defend the master. Meanwhile, the Lynx is hopping between floor holes, soon, obtaining roof access and, as soon as August gets on, the chaingun hides itself and the drone takes a quick look over the roof... With a nod, it backs up then rushes to the edge of the roof and bounces off walls down to the ground and to the Roadmaster. "Okay, is everyone here? Get in, lock the door and we're out!"
August Kohler	As A2 starts dealing with the lab, August is already being pulled upwards. He grits his teeth again, leaving A2 behind, but knows she can handle herself, especially as she says over the radio she's finishing it. He ascends fully to the roof, where he leaps onto the back of No Brakes' drone, gripping on tight. "Not the first machine I've freefalled with." Once they're down at the Roadmaster, August dives in, buckling himself to a seat and drawing his gun as his Persona disappears. "Fuck this place so much."