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Penelope Vasquez             The warehousing district.

    That's not what it's actually, officially referred to, of course; there are street names and roads and such. But this area of Boston is informally referred to as the warehousing district for good reason; it's an area the size of several neighborhoods filled, almost exclusively, with warehouses and their supporting structures. That being cube-hotels, which are essentially warehouses for workers, and roaming food trucks to fuel said workers. Automatic cars load goods delivered by automatic forklifts, the air is filled with the buzzing of hundreds of delivery drones working to bring goods to the doorsteps of those who can afford the service. And there are, of course, the occasional homeless commune nestled amongst the alleys. They're dissuaded from nicking the goods being shipped by guards.

    The designated meeting location is the roof of one of these warehouses; empty, right now. A little plastic baggie full of earpieces has been stapled to an antenna there. The place is a balmy one-twenty degrees farenheit, heat creating a wavy mirrage effect wherever one looks. A few streets away lies the target; a gated compound covered in the branding of the TriBranch corporation, seeing heavy traffic. The warehouse itself is the size of a football field; the gated area more like a small airfield. Dozens of men wearing khakis, button-ups, and armored vests are working to make sure the last of their cargo is ready as the corporate caravan below gears up. A handful of large armored vans, an APC, a few normal-looking outrider cars that hover where they idle, and a trio of massive semis carting what look like refridgerated trailors are all aligning into formation.

    The earpieces rattle, the voice of one Bostonian mercenary coming through them. "Beep beep, it's time to mosey. Everyone introduce yourself, make a couple plans, stake it out. If they're on schedule- and they will be- they start moving in ten minutes. I'm on the line for questions."
The Janitor      One of the earpieces is missing from the plastic bag. Nobody speaks through it.

     Down below in the TriBranch warehouse, "nobody" is dressed in simple attire- jeans, a tan button-down shirt, a stolen bulletproof vest, an off-white flat cap- designed to blend right on in with the other menial workers. Her slouched shoulders, casual-yet-focused gait, and expressionless face make it actively difficult to pay any attention to her.

     She picks up one of the cargo crates, carries it into the back of one of the armored vans, and doesn't come back out.

     Assuming she isn't caught by anyone miraculously eagle-eyed, the warehouse worker settles down in the bottom of the crate, feet resting against the wooden sides, and rearranges objects around herself to obscure her silhouette to any kind of x-ray scan. It ought to be actively boiling in there, but she doesn't so much as sweat- deep meditation shifts her metabolism over to a kind of hibernation mode, rendering her more like a lizard than a mammal.

     She shuts her eyes and relaxes. There'll be time for exertion later.
August Kohler August grabbed his earpiece, affixed it, and then waited on a roof. His Persona had been summoned, the massive black knight standing away from line of sight of guards, as August looked out. He had a plan. It was fucking ballsy. Touching his earpiece, he speaks.

<"August Kohler. Mask of the Watch. You know me. Alright, here's my plan. When the cars come forth, I'll leap onto them, start carving into them, maybe get into a fight. This will give you sneaky people time to find the cargo. It's probably in the trailers - they look refrigerated.">

<"Any complaints?"> August asks, as he waits. He's waiting for them to start moving, so he can leap from roof to roof, and then jump into the fray midway. It's stupid. But it's a very Kohler(TM) plan.
Finna     One more of these crazy heists. Thankfully this time it is NOT on a boat, so a terrible amount of miscommunication and lack of centralized planning -cannot- sink the collective ship... right?

    The Chosen of Luna arrives quietly and swiftly, having silently leapt from rooftop to rooftop like some kind of phantom thief. She wants the operation to go much better this time, having felt fairly responsible for the ship actually sinking in the harbor and causing a big kerfuffle.

    Perhaps it's because of said sense of responsibility that she arrives in human form, instead of playing games, and scurries over to the earpieces quite normally this time. She's been on enough Multiverse operations to know what those are for and put it on.

    "Ugh, it's TOO DAMNED HOT in this yucky concrete jungle. Almost like a desert without the sand!" And most people who might see her complain like this would have no idea just why the heat bothers her so. But she is a creature of the far North, a land ruled by ice and snow, where temperatures like this simply aren't a thing even in the height of the summer thaw.

    Slinking over to the rooftop's edge and sharpening her sight with raptor-like precision, the foxwoman sizes up her prey. For the moment she's unarmed, and wearing a stripped-down, highly risque version of her normal hunter's attire - because hunting leathers in this city just don't work. No doubt she'll adjust her outfit once she nears her target...

    Finally, she speaks into her radio. <"Finna. Hard to plan more than the first two steps until I see what's in the trucks! Getting in looks easy enough though."> ... Easy, she says, with absolute confidence. <"... Not having stuff sink into chaos like last time... much harder.">

    <"Trailers. That's the connected wagons in the rear, right?">

    And she's probably got a fair amount of good reason for that confidence, as her form seems to finally melt in this awful weather and ... and shrink down? In a matter of moments, Finna is simply gone. In her place is a pretty, delicate little hummingbird. The tiny little avian's wings become a blur and OFF it goes, zipping towards the trucks to circle around for a closer look about said ways in, and how the guards carry themselves - and WHAT kind of gear they use she'll have to look out for - whether to avoid, or to impersonate one.
Penelope Vasquez     "Hey, August. Hey, Finna." A pregnant pause, the line left open. "...is that it? That's- I had a whole list of people here, there was..." There's a few sounds of clicking and taps, and a faintly grumpy hrmph. "...oh well. More pay for you two, I guess. Plan sounds risk as fuck, but also pretty solid. Diversions're good. As for figuring out what exactly you're looking for- it'll be labeled R-X-12. In one of the refridgerated trucks sounds about right. If you wanna plan ahead, cargo manifest is probably in the lead car, but that's also a troop transport, from what my staking out says. So, risk reward.

     Finna's inspection is, as one may expect, entirely unnoticed. Her form gets idle marveling from the guards, not suspicion; who would suspect a hummingbird? Those away from their supervisiors snap some quick pictures of her on their personal phones as she buzzes around. The cargo is mostly sealed, crates being carried by two men at a time as the last of it is loaded into their respective vehicles. No clear labels on the boxes, unfortunately; all bar codes and serial numbers. But the few open crates are of very diverse contents. One is filled with boxes of ammunition, the other stacked with foam and modern rifles. One crate looks to be filled entirely with glass bottles, before the top is snapped shut. The workers loading the vehicles hop in after them, a pair per van, a quartet in the outrider cars- the last of them loading themselves up into the heavy APC, which guides itself to the front of the vehicular caravan. They all look rather like office workers, really, except for the armored vest each one is wearing, and the weaponry being carted around; a variety of rifles strapped to backs, submachine guns strapped to waists, and a few more important-looking folk carrying only pistols. Unfortunately, it seems the trailers with refridgeration were all loaded some time, they don't open. One of them, it may be noted, has a much heavier locking system in place on it's back than the others; some sort of eye scanner, as well as a hefty series of physical locks. They don't want anyone getting in there, evidently. That particular truck is smack in the middle of the caravan, the other trucks before and behind it.

    Miss Nobody's crate is another stacked with small arms packed into stabilizing foam. It's a simple matter to snug oneself into the boiling fluff and simply wait. She feels more crates bumping into the armored van, the bumping of boots on the vehicle's deck, and the engine starting up.

    Just like that, everyone is sorted away, and the vehicles are moving. APC at the front, vans interspersed, the trucks in the middle. Two outriding hovercars fire up, their roofs popping open to reveal an employee on a turret. Other cars scoot out of the way as the vehicles weave their way through warehouse hell, towards the entrance to the freeway.
The Janitor      "Who took the other?"

     The uninvited guest presses the earpiece in a little more snugly. When she feels the vehicle moving, she presses both hands into the lid of the crate, then cracks it open silently to peek out. Two guards in this van- she'll wait until neither of them are actively looking at the container she's in. As soon as she's momentarily unobserved, she kicks the lid off and leaps out, momentarily crouching on the ceiling before dropping back down.

     The guns in her crate aren't loaded, but no matter. Wielding a bullpup like a club, she tries to bring it down on the back of one guard's head with preternaturally ruthless violence while kicking the other in the face hard enough to shatter a skull.

     You know, stealthy-like.
August Kohler It's go-time. August leaps onto Dietrich's back, grabbing handholds, and starts leaping from roof to roof, using thrusters on the back of the Persona for short-distance jumps. Right as he gets to the last roof before the freeway, the knight with the giant sword takes a running start, and leaps onto the top of one of the armored trucks, just barely enough to reach the top with the thruster boost and the sheer superhuman strength that leaves a crack in the rooftop he left off.

As August lands, he'll be noticed immediately, probably right as they enter the freeway. That's the plan. There's no shouting or grand announcement, as instead, the Persona moves to leap towards the troop transport, sword going downwards to carve into the roof as it leaps and try and open it up. Time to get that cargo manifest, and also probably get shot.

Good thing August regenerates. Bad thing is, have to try very hard not to get shot in the head.
Finna     This situation is absolutely unfriendly from Finna's perspective. What she wants is in places that are already all locked up. The locks don't look like any sort she's ever picked, and that weird gadget is no doubt some kind of alarm - the workings of which she's unfamiliar with.

    That being the case, she uses the first moment available to dive atop the most heavily secured refrigerated trailer's roof and perch there. Slowly her shape changes, this time becoming a pileated woodpecker - a bird with a body built for a very different purpose.

    ALthough there wouldn't appear to be any sort of THING TO HOLD ONTO, the bird's claws glow an eerie silverish and DIG INTO THE METAL for perch. From there, she waits...

    Waits until August begins his chaos. The moment that he causes a ruckus, Finna begins her work. That birdhead comes down and down again like a thundering jackhammer, bringing a glowing silver beak slamming into the steel and rapidly tearing through it until the structural integrity's completely trashed. With proportionately herculean strength and durability this procedure continues, the bird wasting no time tearing through the exterior and peeling away layers of construction until it can drop into the COOL INTERIOR with hopefully nobody the wiser.

    And even if they do realize someone broke in, it'll be AWFULLY HARD to get into that trailer on the move, right?
Penelope Vasquez     There's a rattle from the crate in Van Four. One guard perks up, raising a brow at the crate, but evidently decides it was just a shift of the cargo as the van lurches onto the freeway. Then the top is kicked open, both guards jump, startled. The one on the right manages to draw his weapon and fire off a single shot into the heavily armored wall, which ricochets in the space harmlessly, before his skull is fractured and he's sent to the floor with a whip of a handheld shotgun into the back of his head. The other guard rises just in time to catch a foot to the nose, planting the bone directly into his brain, and he collapses against the wall. The van keeps on driving. The guard on the floor has a walkie talkie on his hip, which rattles out some coarse words. "Shit, Frank, the fuck, man? Did you drop your gun or something, you alright back there?"      Stealthy-like.

     Unfortunately, it seems the rest of the crew hasn't gotten the 'stealthy-like' message. August's approach is unnoticed, until the massive Persona slams down onto the back of a tractor trailor, and launches through the air, over several vans, towards the APC. There's shocked cries of HEAVY ARMOR! and HOSTILE MECH! as the guards, sleepy as they are, react predictably to a sudden open-faced assault as they move onto a heavily populated freeway. Cars swerve and honk as civilians suddenly do all they can to steer away from the havoc. One of the outriding cars opens up, a heavy turret's fire peppering the back of the Persona as it stabs into the roof of the APC. Thankfully, the men inside were sitting on either side! They're too stunned to react, for a second, as the sword leaves a gaping hole in it's wake.

    The next second, of course, machinegun fire and screams flow out of the rent metal as the men inside panic. Within the Janior's car, that radio squawks again. "...Frank? Frank wake the fuck up answer your mic Frank shit's happening!"

    Finna's efforts are rather straightforward- with all cars going on alert, and the outrider cars moving into position to take down the active threat, nobody notices a woodpecker perching on top of a truck. That steel-piercing nose pierces the exterior with ease. Before the shapeshifter is nearly launched off of the vehicle with explosive pressure as supercooled and pressurized oxygen is rent from the trailor, peeling open the hole due to the sheer force. There are no lights within the space. Thankefully, if anyone noticed, there are no callouts; everyone is focused on the giant sword-wielding armor-knight.
The Janitor      The Completely Normal Warehouse Worker starts popping open crates, looking for anything that looks like high explosives, artillery ammunition, flamethrower fuel, or anything else that'd make a horrifyingly awful explosion. Where she finds them, she hooks them up to scavenged bits of electronics and wires torn out of the interior lights, creating a messy but functional multi-part bomb.

     From there, she grabs the guard's walkie-talkie, kicks out the back door of the truck, and starts to climb beneath it, along the mechanical undercarriage and just inches from the high-velocity asphalt. One wrong move could lead to getting mangled and run over. Jane Doe doesn't make wrong moves. Down here, she's safe from prying eyes and menacing turrets.

     August has the APC. Something's messing with the refrigerated truck. So the Janitor rips open one of the doors to the cabin of the transport she's under, climbs in, tries to shove the driver right out the window and onto the highway, and then settles into the driver's seat. If all goes well, she'll try to side-swipe the turret car with a pistol-toting supervisor in it, reach through the window at the moment of contact, and drag the poor man into her car while forcing the other vehicle off the road!
Finna     WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSH!! The Woodpecker's whole body is blown up and backwards from the rushing superchilled air, and covered in a layer of frost all at once. Somehow, though, it holds on! Those talons are dug into metal, and its little body is much tougher than it looks.

    A little bit of flailing later, and the creature slips through the hole and into the wagon. As it falls, its shape yet again changes. Finna lands in fox form - having donned her black-grey-brown short-furred summer coat. Whatever she lands on, balance won't be much of a problem - though the landing might be a bit clumsy as she's not sure what's under her!

    The advantage of fox form, though, is that she's small and nimble, and has excellent nightvision... so the trickle of light coming through the hole she made may be just enough to determine whether the package she's after is here. ... or if anything else that's cool is laying around!
August Kohler Bullets rip out of one of the turrets into the back of Dietrich. This is bad for August, who is on the back of the Persona, as he tries to slide off under the Persona's legs and onto the APC, but is riddled in the back with bullets, as the armor is torn open, exposing more and more plates of it, causing August to scream in pain.

But a turret should kill a person it rips into. August would be dead, had it torn through his heart or his head. But it missed both, narrowly, bloody chunks down his bad as his body is constantly mending itself back together faster than the bullets can kill him. As Dietrich succeeds in ripping open the top, and there's stunned men inside, August inhales.

He's not built for incapacitation. And if he offers them a choice, they'll shoot him. He doesn't want to kill them. They're just doing their job.

But their job is to fight him, and die to people like him. They signed up for this. They understand the consequences. An ally needs August's help. He can feel guilty later. He can't let it control him.

Dietrich's sword flickers through the APC. It slices through the men inside, to the point that it'd spray the interior of the car red, as August drops down afterwards, looking for the cargo manifest, hopefully not too bloodied to read. The car's going to overturn and crash. He needs to grab it and get out, quickly, before he's shot again and nearly killed by a turret.

Coughing up globs of blood, he turns on his radio. <"Any progress...?">
Penelope Vasquez     The janitor gets lucky. The van is packed with crates of arms and ammunition; one of which appears to be dragon's breath shotgun rounds. Empty them out, collect them together, wire them to a shitty detonator, and you have an excellent flaming explosive. The crawl underneath the van goes well- though it seems the entire caravan has sped up in response to the the attack, leaving that asphalt whizzing by way too fast for comfort.

    But, of course, the Janitor doesn't make mistakes. She crawls up the side of the armored van's door, pulls the driver out by the head- he was foolishly sticking it out the window to try and observe the fight- and turns him into a red smear on the freeway. The turret-hovercar is caught by surprise as it's given a pit maneuver by one of their own vehicles, an unrecognized driver behind the wheel! The snatch is made, and the supervisor is dragged out by the collar, hung over the speeding road! That turret-fire is drawn off of August's Persona as the hovercar spins out- then quickly rights itself. The entire vehicle spins on a central axis, still scooting forward along the road, as the guards within and the turret-manner regain their balance and aim to fire at Jane Doe!

    August's maneuver is successful, especially now that the unseen ally has diverted fire from his position. Dietrich cuts the entire APC in half, top from bottom. The truck continues to roll on, but with no driver, it will soon veer off the suspended freeway and crash either into the oncoming lane, or off the road to the buildings below. In the back, with the troops, is a safe- by sheer luck, the Persona has sheared the top from it too. Within are large bundles of cash contained within smaller lockboxes- must be near a hundred thousand dollars- and a paper sheet, covered in blood. Luckily, it's been laminated, so he can wipe it off. It's easy to read, too.

            It shows that the third trailer, not the second- the one that has all the heavy locks- is carrying a payload of medications, stimulants, and medical machinery. The heavily-armored freezer truck is labeled 'Troop Transport- Classified.'

    There are several cool things inside the refridgerated truck. Ba-dum tssh. The thing is not stacked with crates, however- Finna lands squarely on the floor of the trailer. The walls are covered in machinery, piping, tubes, and racks of weaponry of several makes. Massive machetes, a shotgun which looks like it would blow the arms off of anyone firing it, a scythe, dozens of grenades. And two large, man-sized tubes filled with water. As the fox peers within, it would show, through the hazy liquid, what looks like an enbalmed cadaver wearing a matte black trenchcoat. It's mouth has been sewn shut, and it's eyes are hollow and empty. It has no hair, no nose (though there are nose-slits), and a flat, square head. There's a little screen on the side, scrolling with text.

    Reconstituted Asset Suspension Chamber. Atmospheric disturbance detected. Emergency decantation underway. Decantation at fifty percent. The percentage rises every couple seconds. A set of orange lights flicker alive in the corpse's head, and focus down on Finna. There are two tanks in the truck.
August Kohler With a quick movement of hands, August grabs both the lockboxes under one arm of the Persona, and the sheet with his own hand, wiping off the blood and reading it. He shares the information on it, and then notices the car spinning out. They're not supposed to make a national incident. So...

Dietrich leaps out, in front of the spinning out APC. Still holding the lockboxes, a hand goes forward, moving to stop the car from going over into the buildings and causing civilian casualties, trying to slow it to a stop. August doesn't have much else to do, especially as Finna deals with zombies and tries to get the medicine payload. It also might make him a sitting duck.
The Janitor      The Janitor holds the pistol-toting supervisor by the neck with one arm out the side of the driver's door. Reaching into her pocket, she grabs a pen and carves out his right eyeball while using him as a human shield from the turret- if he's lucky, friendly fire will kill him before she squeezes his eye out into her palm like a peeled grape. Then she drops him onto the highway and jams her stolen bullpup into the floorboards so it's forcing the gas pedal down, and picks a very specific trajectory.

     Step one: ram the truck with the "moldies" in it from behind. Step two: pit it into the APC, August, and Dietrich. Step three: set the three-cars-and-a-knight pile-up off in a fireball that'll likely make the highway impassable.

     That decided, she jams the pen into the steering column to lock the wheel into place, kicks out the windshield, and leaps out onto the roof of the frozen truck with bullets passing on either side of her as "her" truck collides with its back bumper.

     She kicks the rear-view mirror through the driver's-side window to hopefully incapacitate the driver, then hops down through the hole that Finna made. If the fox is still there, she doesn't pay it any attention- she just picks up the biometrically-locked crate with thews-straining strength and heaves it back up through the hole in the roof, then jumps up after it before the Moldies wake up and her car detonates.
Finna     Finna consults with Penelope over the radio all while making the most disgusted face a fox can at this turn of events. EWWW, FROZEN TECHNO-ZOMBIES. Do not want. After determining that what she wants isn't here though...

    Finna's just about ready to vamoose, gathering strength in her legs, when... BANG! Down comes Jane... dressed as one of the guards. Who strangely IGNORES the fox and instead tries to make a grab for... hey, are they securing cargo or...?

    Finna squints at the strange motions. Too smooth. Too practiced. Very un-guard-like. Not at ALL in-line with the apparent training and discipline of those things...

    The fox gathers her strength and LEAPS right after Jane. Divine light flows from the vixens's skin and fur, a silvery-purplish aura of light and darkness that shimmers surreally like the hazy aura surrounding the moon in darkest night. Its muscles bulge and tighten and it scurries away with supervulpine speed to the very front of the trailer in under a second, claws digging into the steel for a perch and seemingly unbothered by the wind of the driving.

    The end result is that the Janitor is being stared down by a glowing Arctic Fox in its summer coat. A creature that is clearly waiting for her to make a move... though for how long it'll wait is anyone's guess.
Penelope Vasquez     "This is Brett Eisman for Newscorp channel six, reporting from the Eye In The Sky Emergency Helicopter to bring you the scene unfolding!" The suited, sweating man is rocking in an unsteady shot, the chaos on the suspended freeway below him. "We're seeing reports that there's some sort of assault taking place on a TriBrance transport, attempting to prevent goods from going to our proud boys on the Canadian warfront. There's some sort of mechanized infantry attempting to halt the caravan, and-!" The reporter is cut off as a van rams the back of a truck, a hole blown in the top- and the van explodes in an impressive fireball.

    The van explodes in an impressive fireball as one of the hovercar's firing goons accidentally strikes the makeshift bomb Jane Doe planted on the hood of the armored van. The truck behind it swerves to avoid the blast- the trailer tilts, then rolls to the side, screeching on the asphalt as it makes a collision at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. This is the trailer with the drugs in it, according to the manifest. It slides an enormous distance, knocking the hovercar firing at Jane off-tilt, and then bowling it all the way over. It crashes to the earth and flips a frankly excessive number of times. All the vans behind the back-most truck are forced to stop, the traffic behind them quickly catching up as the freeway becomes impassible. Soon, there's gridlock behind the scene, and everything is interspersed with honking.

    August's attempts- or, more accurately, his Persona's- are successful! Initially. His attempt to bring the APC to a halt works, the armored knight stopping the vehicle with another screech of metal-on-asphalt, it's feet digging in. The armored vans swerve out of it's way, the first truck following them and speeding on it's way, the rest of the vans slowing down- and discharging about a dozen armed guards. One of the vans has had a crate cracked open inside of it, and the guards within come to a knee as they level what can only be rocket launchers at the Persona. The others level weapons at August.

    And then the truck with a cargo of cyberzombies rams the APC, out of control after the knocking it recieved from the blast. It bowls into the Persona and the wreck it's holding, knocks it right over, spilling paper bills all over the tarmac. The flipping back trailer careens over all the guards and crashes with an echoing THUD, a crumpled tin-can mess on the road. Finna and the Janitor are, of course, sent flying who-knows-where.

     The guards surrounding August look like they're about to speak, before every radio in the area cracks to life at once, including the ones on The Gang's ears.
The Janitor      The strange "guard" on the van's roof has her eyes obscured by the brim of her cap and her fluttering hair. Even so, an architect of emotion like Finna would be able to tell... nothing. Accurately, because there isn't anything. No twitch of the facial muscles, no tension in the lips. Just staring down the bizarre fox, eyelessly.

     Then she looks up at the helicopter above, does a 'kickflip' with her crate, hops up on top of it, and leans in a peculiar direction. The truck crumples like a soda can, and the improvised bomb goes off. Jane's launched into the air on top of the locked crate, riding the blast wave and collision-momentum forwards and upwards.

     The TV feed is interrupted by Jane slamming a reinforced crate into the reporter and likely knocking him clean off onto the street below. She punches the camera, then holds a sharp shard of glass from the truck's windshield to the pilot's neck.

     "Get me out of here."
August Kohler August is surrounded. As he stops the APC, digging his feet in. The rest of the vans come in, and there's a dozen guards. They have rocket launchers and machine guns. A truck dives into Dietrich and August, sending them flying back, but August expects it fast enough to be able to land in a tumble, and then climb onto Dietrich, which lands on his feet.

A dozen guards. A dozen ways to die. And one very determined boy. August listens to how dire this is. He could bail...but that's cowardice. That's giving up on someone he offered to help. He's the one who chose this risky path, he needs to live it through. He needs to direct.

He needs to pretend to enjoy this. He doesn't, but if he's going to become a ripper today, he can at least smile. He cracks a grin, fake, and holds his hands up in the air. And then, as they give their announcements...

He regrabs the rails, and Dietrich speeds off. The sword flails out, suddenly transforming into a segmented chainsaw whip. It flickers, and a massive plume of flames surrounds it, stretching out. As the rockets and bullets come, Dietrich's whip focuses first on igniting the rockets in mid air, explosions buffeting it with backlash and tearing through more armor, as it dances with superhuman speed around bullets to make sure they hit Dietrich and not August, tearing up armor that regenerates itself way too quickly. The whip is cracked again.

A dozen men find themselves in a ballet. Dietrich spins towards one, thrusters firing, and the whip cracks to take off his head, before lashing to carve through the torso of another. A missile fires. It blasts Dietrich backwards, August screaming in pain as he coughs up more blood and as burns cover his body, skin trying to repair itself, but in mid-air, a fireball is launched from the whip, to explode several more of the men. The dance continues. Onwards and onwards.

Every member of the human opposition will be dealt with, sooner or later. It's the zombies August is worried about. He's not sure how much he can dance with those. He looks for the closest warpgate. As soon as Finna has the stuff...they need to bounce.
Finna     Holy smokes, things are EXPLODING! And seeing just what is exploding... the fox intensifies its stare at the 'guardsman' giving her that emotionless stare. "Congratulations. You fucked EVERYTHING up for us!" The vixen exclaims after piecing together the evidence, somehow managing human speech in that form.

    Whatever the case might really be, she does nothing to stop Jane's escape. That's not the package she's looking for, and there's no point sweating the small stuff.

    Sensing an impact about to happen, Finna does... something weird. Her whole body LIQUIFIES on impact... turning into a ripply, compressible, quicksilver puddle of LIQUID FOX that briefly squeezes down like an accordion as it absorbs all of the kinetic energy of the crumpling, otherwise bone-crunching impact...

    And then LAUNCHES HERSELF through the air as if flung by a catapult, sailing nose-first for the third refrigerated trailer. Except... by this point, it's not so tiny. While sailing through the air, Finna expands in size, gaining humaniform physique... becoming a six, or perhaps even seven foot tall WEREFOX. She SLAMS into the locked back-end with outstretched glowing silvery claws, aiming to tear a hole straight into the door, peel it open, and dive in!
Penelope Vasquez     August's dance is beautiful, in a way. In the space of a minute, a dozen men reduced to tomato paste and shredded uniforms on the tarmac. Beheaded, disarmed, disembowled, burnt, charred, ripped apart- their effort was valient, and they land a lot of good shots. Painful shots. One of the rockets explodes in midair, a second lands- and takes out a chunk of Dietrich's torso. That won't come back easily. And bullets themselves are chip damage enough. But, after a moment, it's still. The only movement is the cars whipping by in the other lane, somehow not blocked off yet. The only sound the vehicles, and the whump of helicopter.

     There's an echoing crack from behind him as the metallic sheeting of the zombie carrier is ripped away. A tall, thin corpse steps out, followed by a larger, bulkier, inhuman-proportioned fellow. The thin one howls cheerily from every microphone in the area. "Goooooooood morning Viet-nam!" There's an anime-sized cleaver in it's hand. The bulky one is holding that arm-destroying shotgun. That's all the preamble the team gets before they act. The bulky one aims the gun up.

     Up above, the helicopter pilot freezes as a shard of glass is held to his neck. His arms shoot off the console, the vehicle hovering in place. "Hey, hey, hey, I'm on your side, don't- I'm just- this is a temp job! I'm a pilot, I'll fly you, I'll fly-" and that's his last words as his entire torso, along with much of the helicopter's front, evaporates into, respectively, blood and sheering metal as a single solid slug the size of a small dog pegs the helicopter. What remains of the windshield is coated in blood. The thing is, of course, crashing back to earth.

     As the helicopter lands behind him with a boneshaking flump, the skinny zombie is stepping purposefully towards August and Dietrich, slapping that cleaver into his palm. "Pilot, groundrunner, offer for you! Who sent you. Tell me and you survive." The stitched-closed mouth contorts into a grimace that's supposed to be a friendly smile.

    The thick zombie steps to the shattered wreck of the helicopter and reaches through the broken front. It ignores the Janitor. It's looking for the box.

    Finna, apart from the chaos- is, simply, successful. The trailer is filled with medical wreckage; spilled crates, surgical tools, what look like robotic parts. But, spared and whole, is a crate the size of a twin-sized bed, labeled their target. R-X-12.
The Janitor      The Janitor leans away from the explosion of gore, neatly avoiding- out of distaste more than squeamishness- getting a drop of blood on her outfit. The helicopter's going down, spinning wildly around her. She hooks one foot around a rod and reaches into her jacket, pulling out a fresh jumpsuit, and tears off the bulletproof vest to slip it on over her guard-clothes while shoving the eyeball into the biometric lock. She doesn't need the entire crate if she can get its contents.

     If she succeeds in cracking it open before the helicopter hits the ground, she'll walk away with her prize, hidden by the deep black smoke until she can blend in as some kind of mechanic or garbageman. Otherwise, she'll just have to rig the helicopter's fuel tank to explode with the spark plug and get out of dodge with the entire box over her shoulder while the moldie chokes on flames.
August Kohler August's Persona is regenerating slowly. A rocket launcher is hard to completely patch up in a short time period. It'll take him at least the rest of the night to completely regenerate from his wounds, minimum, if not longer. But as the zombie with the cleaver comes forward, smiling, he gives August an offer. August thinks it through. And then he nods, stepping forward with his Persona.

"They call themselves Calico Jack."

After giving the zombie only a second to think it through and possibly realize that's just a pirate, Dietrich's sword goes sweeping forward. The zombie can survive a sword. Hopefully it can't survive a rushing sword being shoulder-checked forward to knock them off the suspended highway. "Have a nice trip!"

And then, August is going to try and bail before the rest of the zombies can get to him
Finna     CRUNCH! Through the wrecked door Finna goes. It takes her very little time to spot what she's after, but DAMN is it huge. She frowns at the size of it... and ponders just how she's going to get something THAT BIG out of here unseen. Where's she going to hide it? How will she ditch pursuers? And it needs to be kept at least somewhat cold, for SOME period of time...

    Brain working a mile a minute, she finally comes up with a plan. One that has a STRONG chance of working.

    Her flesh ripples and expands, tightening and turning blackish. Fur coarsens at an impressive rate, lengthening and turning brown and shaddy... and she lopes down forward, landing onto all fours. But by this time... her paws are expanding in every direction like tree trunks. Hard and flat, they give her the leverage needed to support her rapidly growing body. Fuzzy ears slide to the side of her head and grow, grow, GROW, becoming gigantic, floppy flaps of skin... and her nose distorts, elongating spectacularly...

    In about twenty seconds, the third refrigerated trailer's ENTIRE HULL creaks and bends, distorts, buckles outwards... and utterly comes apart at the seams. A GARGANTUAN WOOLY MAMMOTH, easily twice the size that any living example has EVER reached in all of history, bursts free of the twisted wreckage, with the target container resting atop its tusks and held carefully there by its trunk.

    Despite its tremendous mass, this LUMBERING GIANT - still slightly aglow with the light of the moon - nimbly turns about in place and begins BARRELING down the road at improbable speeds considering its mass, as though it were simply gliding over the ground and didn't need to worry about its tremendous mass or inertia. This thing simply doesn't obey the laws of physics! It leaps over cars and other obstacles like a horse might!

    And it's headed straight for the nearest body of water. That might be the infamous harbor.
Penelope Vasquez     The Janitor pops the lock successfully. Within- a laminated binder. A heavy case which rattles. There will be time enough to examine later. The hefty zombie grabs the case- now empty- and doesn't register anything wrong. The Janitor disappears into the smoke.

     The thin reconstituted agent grins all the wider as August actually speaks. "Calico Jack? Alright, that's a new one, not in the database. Your compliance has been noted." It actually moves to stow away it's cleaver into it's jacket- before it freezes, and the Persona lines up for a line drive.

    Fore!

     A forcefield crackles to life around the zombie, but it only prevents it from being cut in half. Goodbye cyberzombie, gone crashing through the roof of a warehouse several stories below. The thick agent, carrying a black box under it's armpit, gives August no further issue as it drops off of the side after it's superior. There are sirens in the distance. Time to vamoose.

    VERY time to vamoose. As if they haven't caused enough chaos? A wooly mammoth appears on the roadside, leaping over cars, loping at highway speeds towards the harbor that August and Finna may try very hard to not recognize. Nobody is prepared for a mammoth. Nobody shoots at the mammoth. Off the side of the freeway it goes, into the murky drink of the harbor, with a near-silent 'plink' and barely a splash.

    The water tastes awful, though.
August Kohler As the man goes flying, and the thick agent ignores August, Dietrich turns and speeds up through the highway, heading towards wherever the homeless would be, towards the places people don't travel. He'll desummon his Persona once he does, find a homeless guy to get some clothes from, find one of those cleaning booths to get the blood off, and take a walk until everything dies down.

Finna better get the medicine to Penelope, otherwise this is worthless. But, at least, mission successful, right?
Penelope Vasquez     The Janitor simply disappears, with the unknown cargo the two reconstituted assets seemed to keen to recover. As she does.

    August's walk is... way, way too easy. A homeless man trades his bloody clothes for his dirty, ratty ones easily. The Kwik-Clean stall is a gross and unpleasant experience as he's doused with chemical cleaner and given a puff of synthetic pine scent, but it does clean him efficiently. No drier, though. But the baking heat dries him out until the evening, when it's probably safe to head to Penelope's.

    The lunar Mammoth is unpursed, nobody expecting to need an underwater sonar. The crate is stashed in the mud for later retrieval. She, too, can probably simply hang out until she decides to crash somewhere, or simply appear as an animal as she explores Boston until multiversal gates re-open to the public.

     A successful mission. Despite what the flaming wrecks on the highway would indicate.