Having parked the car in as secluded a spot in the lot as possible. Reg grumbles as she gets out of the vehicle to find cover. "How the hell are they following us so fast?!" She looks up as her roto-drone finally catches up to them. She smiles at the drone and pats it like you would a dog on the head. "Scout."she commands, the drone bobs up and down and then wanders into the park.
The elf gets this distant look. "Give me a few cycles and I'll get recon."

Felice quickly relays the information to the others, while her com is mute for a second.

“Someone intercepted the call. They are here and say we are outnumbered and outgunned and should drop the package, which belongs to Ghostwalker, and just walk away. I do not really want to do that, but well... the fact that they are here and could intercept that call shows that they are ahead of us right now. Opinions? Oh, and quick, please.�

Alastor gives a quiet growl under his breath from his position in responce to Felice's info. "We're here to do a big job for someone, I say we stick to the job, whatever the item is, it sounds lik it's pretty big. Therefore I don't fancy just handing it over to someone else we don't know." His voice is soft, and quiet. He stands there readied to act.

Felice waits only a moment, and if noone else is against going the hard way, she will answer...

“We are always outnumbered. As for being outgunned, I would not be too sure about that...”

"Arel, bring me your light, bring me your fire. Come to my aid now." Eury concentrates deeply and a rush of fire sweeps around his head. "Alright, let's show them what we can do."

"Fine then, hope someone will miss you."

Well it looks like this is ending the hard way. As a glowing angel appears near Eury, rain hissing off it's wings, you spot several people shifting from hiding into combat ready. Riptide wasn't lying about you being surrounded.

"Kill them all, bring them to righteousness." Eury smiles grimly and hunches down, trying to keep as much of the police car between him and the enemies.

Your opponents break cover and start to close. Leading the charge is a massive troll whose fists seem encased in clouds of metal shards. suddenly two sonic booms sound out and at the rear one foes head disintegrates. The the side of Trolls chest erupts and his momentum topples him forwards as the rain washes his blood away. Looks like you have a friend. From somewhere in the distance their comes the sound of tearing plasteel. A couple of your foes twitch in the distraction of the noise. Maybe they were wrong about outnumbered as well.

Eury's flaming angel blasts the ork setting him on fire despite the rain. He screams in pain but doesn't fall

Riptide doesn't seem bothered by the vicissitudes of fortunes in the shadow, at a rapid jog he keeps on coming, his two pistols blaze and Eury s felled despite the cover of a police car. turning to ignore the obvious enemy offensive Felice neatly cuts down one of your opponents, an elf with an Ares Alpha. The Alastor fires on Riptide, twin pistols returning the fire Riptide jinks sideways, avoiding some of the fire, but a bullet catches him and on mud a side step becomes a slide and then a dive and Riptide ends up prone as Alastor calmly tracks him to the floor. Riptide starts to roll to his feet he's hurt but not out yet.

About twenty meters out a figure detaches from the trees and starts to sprint away, rifle still held. Looks like one of your enemies has decided to cal it a night.

A hail of fire, both real and metaphorical finishes off you opponents. The fleeing figure weaves away from tracking fire until two well placed sniper shots fell him permanently.

When it looks like things have settled down, Felice heads over to where Eury is lying and checks his condition, trying to get him back to consciousness with the help of her Medkit.



“Looks like we had some help, and I have the strange feeling, that's the same shooter who got Clarke, whatever that means. I kinda dislike that everyone around here seems to know more about what's going on than we do... we should really get rid of this thing soon. Reg? Any idea how this guy could intercept my call? Should I try again?”

As Felice works on Eury a voice comes over the teams comm.

Metatron here, I'm moving up to join you. Do you need me to play field medic?

As he arrives Eury starts to come round. A tall figure in light full body urban combat armour with a rifle the size of Reggie resting non-threateningly and comfortably over one shoulder. His manner is calm and not hostile. His face plate shifts from matt black to clear and the blue skinned face beneath show the proof of the name he's claimed. Over his shoulder you can all see something incoming, a large winged shape...

Upon Metatron's message and then seeing him appear out of nowhere in a passive manner, Alastor gives the blue elf a welcome grin. "Hi, mate. Glad to see that it's you who's been our mysterious assistant here. To be honest, though, I was suspecting it was." He walks over towards him, partially on guard should anyone else appear out of the darkness. "Eury's pretty much been the worst one off here... unless you include our now Former-" the last word of this is stressed upon, "teammates. Or apparent teammates, it seems. Wouldn't happen to know anything about the latter one, would you? From the way it was executed, the work was done by no lame-ass marksman." Alastor speaks calmly, but the barely veiled anger is there; he's clearly pissed off about the way things worked out.

Reg drops out of VR and joins the others, her hand covering the tear in her outfit from the grenade earlier this evening. Spinny comes down from above, overing just above her left shoulder.
"It appears that 'Riptide' spoofed the call to the J, and intercepted it. I've turned his commlink off for now and got some intel we can parse through later. We might want to grab it for further analysis." Pointing at at the body.

She looks at the blue elf, nods and shuffles nervously. "We probably should keep on the move, I don't like how easy we're being tracked."

No need.

Not a voice but these words echo in your heads. the mighty winged shape lands and through the slowing rain you can see Perianwyr's draconic form.

Again words appear in your mind - The job is over, you work is done. Payment is the next stage.

The dragon moves over to stand near Metatron.

That is once we have delivered the orb.

"Looks like Felice has Eury pretty much sorted." He nods over to where Felice is administering the first aid.
"I know what happened to the enemy sniper," He says with a wry grin on his face "but I'm sure we can explain all once the job is truely finished."

Alastor nods. "I agree, to both you and Reggie," he says, looking first at Metatron. "Out in the open like this, we're too exposed." He looks then up at Perianwyr, curious as to why the dragon himself had shown up in person and about the last thing he said. "So, what now? You said 'once we've delivered the orb'." As he says this, he's ready to move himself, expecting the answer to be brief for just now, but a more detailed explanation would be very welcome later.

“Well, no need to call you then, I suppose. So, where to?�

Not far at all.

Peri shifts into his human form. He mutters about the rain, that even now is turning into a fine drizzle. Patches of summer blue are starting to break out out within the cloudy sky. A van drives up and skids to a halt in the carpark. The back doors swing open and Peri leads the way in. Once you all sat on bench seats. Perianwyr exhales heavily, a long drawn out sigh.

"My apologies about Clarke. We suspected the Ghost team had a sniper, I had hoped we'd eliminate him before he could fire, but you were proving more difficult to follow than I'd thought."

With that he lapses into silence. After about ten minutes the van draws to a halt. The doors again swing open. Before you lies a well tended garden dominated by a formal tiered pond with fountain. The sky is bright blue, only the smell of wet earth suggests the rains of the last few days. At edge of the pond stands a tall human, his back towards you. He wears a suit that probably cost more than your fee, his hair is a pale white blond. He doesn't seem to have noticed you or indeed the van and seems intent on watching the fish.

Felice keeps her comments about information that might have been quite useful for the successful outcome of the run and the survival of certain team members to herself.

Before they leave, Felice makes sure, that the other team is taken care of. For one, their tech might have some information about her own team, which she really doesn't want lying around in the mud attached to some dead or unconscious fellas, and it might also be useful; at least comlinks and anything of intrinsic value.

Eury picks himself out of the mud, concentrates, and his wounds knit up. "If we can get through the rest of the night without incident, it would be nice. Just how many separate groups are after this thing anyway?" He then gets into the van.

Reg watches in near amazement as the dragon lands and assumes human form. All that power....
She bends down and removes Riptides commlink from his body, grabs her duffel bag from the police car and enters the van with the team. She tucks Spinny and the commlink into her bag with her gear - making sure the device isn't transmitting, and sits beside Alastor. She's quiet during the ride, reading through what data she had acquired to see if there's something of use to the team, or for tender on the black market.

Whilst in the van on the journey, Alastor sits, likewise quietly, his eyes some of the time on mainly Reggie and then other members of the team, checking over them to see how they are, and watching Perianwyr at Metatron. Anyone from the team who pays attention would notice that Alastor's fairly relaxed with Metatron. At one point after the van's pulled away, he takes his helmet off for a couple of minutes, resting it on his knee.

Once everyone else has climbed into the van, Metatron follows suit. He places his rifle under the seats, and then sits down himself.
He removes his helmet, and like Alastor places it on his knee. He rests his head against the back of the seat, closes his eyes and almost seems asleep for the journey.

When the van stops, he opens his eyes, and with an economy of motion opens the back doors and waits for the team to clamber out before he moves any further.

At the meeting Felice mentions something to the rest of the team, loud enough for everyone else to overhear it, though not aimed at them.

“The leader of the other team claimed they were working for Ghostwalker. He wasn't willing to prove it, however, so I guess they were just making it up. Hopefully. He's someone on whose toes I wouldn't really want to step on.�

The gentleman waiting for you turns. He gestures with his hand for you to join him outside. His features are strong lending his face a harshly handsome look. his eyes are almost unreadable, and a deep cold blue.

"Please join me. Bring my orb with you if you would."

Peri nods in a reassuring manner, he was obviously expecting this. He stands and hops out of the van, bow low to the manner in a way that suggests a deep respect, or fear, for the pale haired man. The pale haired man registers the bow but does nothing in return. He looks into the van his eyes straying towards the bag containing the orb.

Alastor emerges from the van, the bag with the orb within it slung over his shoulder. He steps forward to join with the others outside of the vehicle, and stands politely before this fair man- he notices Perianwyr's deep bow from either respect, fear, or both. He stands there as a young underling in one of the big corps stands before say the CEO would. He unslings the bag from over his shoulder, ready to hand the orb over, waiting for the signal to do so.

Perianwyr nods to Alastor. The fair man takes the bag.

"Pay them Perianwyr. We have matters to discuss."

Peri nods, "All respect sir, I think given the excellence of their service they deserve a full debrief. So long as you approve."

The fair man nods, " As you wish," he glances at each of you, "You have my thanks, you have each done me a great service, this will be remembered."

With that he vanishes into thin air, only a brief gust of cold wind remains and the beating of icy wings soon fades.

Perianwyr turns, "Now I believe you all need a drink and are owed both money and explanations. Lets do that at mine if thats okay with you. Metatron had best come to, I'm his paymaster today as well."

With that he turns and climbs into the van.

"Since it's morning now, if you all send me a breakfast order, it'll be waiting at the club."

“Coffee. Black.�

Despite feeling quite honored, Felice breathes a sigh of relief as the situation's tense lowers.

Relieved to have finally handed over the orb to its owner, Alastor steps back into place besides the others with a polite bow of his head as he does so, a small rush of pride swelling within him, from meeting the powerful Ghostwalker himself and having done him a job, and surviving it. He stands, listening attentively to the exchange between Perianwyr and Ghostwalker, from the icy wings with which the pale 'man' vanished.

'Yes, a full explanation would be nice,' he thinks to himself, as he climbs back into the van and resumes his place on one of the benches. Grateful for the offering of breakfast waiting for them upon arrival, he grins, "A coffee, and a full English Breakfast would be great, thanks."

You arrive at Peri's club, the van parks up and you can all head inside. The breakfasts you each ordered are sat at a table. The smell of warm peanuts drifts from a sloppy looking sandwich at the head of the table. Perianwyr sits down before the mess and happily tucks in, showing every sign of enjoy the fatty, nutty mess he is eating. Once your all part way through breakfast he puts the remains of his sandwich down, wipes his hands and stands.

"Explanations," he begins, "While I employed you for this job, we were all working for the ruler of this city. The man we just met was Ghostwalker himself. The item you stole was real, and is one of his most valued possessions. and we dragons do not let such things out of our grasp for light reasons. HE has recently grown tired of the shadow games his enemies play in his dominion. So he called in my service, as the price of my rent as it were. We came up with the plan, through something out there that every enemy would want, would be willing to do anything for. Thus the Eye was chosen. My ties to him are obvious but so is my lack of ambition, so many of my kind think I must have a plan beyond music. So it is easy for them to believe that I would try a power play. You became the bait, or at least carried it. My runners desperately trying to deliver the goods. Of course that was all to get HIS enemeies in mine and Metatron's sights. You had to remain ignorant to add, some verisimilitude to the whole story, we faked the drop off team and their apparent demise. Everything else was real, it just had twice the numbers, or was positioned so we could remove it without you noticing. That is mostly it, I'm sure questions remain, feel free to ask them. You did better than I could have ever hoped, my apologies for the loss of Clarke, no such thing is allowed for Shiver, I will be looking for what he served in this."

As Perianwyr calls everyone to attention, Alastor puts down his fork, on which a piece of black pudding and some bacon are skewered. He listens, a turbulent mixture of anger at having been used as fairly expendable pawns and relief at having gotten out alive of this game that the two dragons had set up. It was the catch of the decent rate of pay they'd received, despite having been a team together for only a brief length of time. No wonder he'd hired this team as opposed to say, Metatron's.

When Peri opens open for questions, Alastor's gaze locks onto the dragon. "I have two questions for now. Firstly, I take it that the empty house we 'took' the Eye from was a plant, set up specifically for the job then, right? And secondly, are you aware at present who it was who took out Clark?"

"The house was the place Ghostwalker used to keep the eye. The matrix details I provided you cut through half the security and and Ghostwalker was being a little lax about the other half. The man who killed Clarke recieved a bullet through the brain as he pulled the trigger for a second shot." he motions towards Metatron, "Unfortunately we didn't find him quickly enough to prevent the first shot."

Alastor nods, then takes a long sip of his coffee, before resuming eating but still constantly listening.

“Twice the numbers, twice the pay, right?� Felice says with a wink.

“I only have one question. How much information the other teams had about us came from you?�

"Negotiating for a bonus after the run? Nice try that's for sure. On the other matter, yes I was the main source of information on your where abouts, via a couple of intel brokers, who even now I'm sure are being kicked out of bed by Ghostwalker's agents to answer questions about who they work with. I apologise for walking you into ambushes but the job would hardly work if you could go to ground. Ghostwalker provided the weather to prevent you fleeing the city."

Reg remained quiet. Whether this was out of intimidation, anger, or just plain lost is hard to tell. After asking Peri for Steak, eggs, hash browns and a stiff drink, she says little, sitting beside Alastor in silence.
When they enter the club, she grabs a bundle of clothes from her pack, excuses herself, disappearing into the ladies room. She comes back out looking refreshed with minor makeup and a black outfit. She's holding a large cloth bag which most likely contain her work clothes.

The elve's table manners are better suited for that of an orc, but she does her best to not simply wolf her food down and slows her eating pace. Her food is more than half finished when Peri begins to talk and she idly keeps munching during his explanation.
Pawns in a game of chess between two dragons is all she can think of. Her face is grim as he explains their role in this game of cat and mouse.
She smiles at Felice's quick witt, and waits to see if the dragon will pay them more.

Eury stays quiet during the meetings, and eats a very light meal. He stays fairly straight-faced during the explanations of the events. Towards the end of the meal he asks, "So, how many other dragons have we embarrassed so far? I'd guess Hestaby and Lofwyr are going to not be happy with all this. How long are the aftershocks of this going to be requiring us to keep our heads down hard, would you say?" Eury then takes a light sip from his drink.

"I saw no signs of Hestaby being involved, we suspect Lofwyr and Alamais, plus a team of Tir Tairngire ghosts."

Alastor raises an eyebrow, sarcastic comments running through his mind but remain unspoken. "So, what happens now? We keep playing the proverbial carrot on a string for these guys, or do we go back to normal? Do you wish to keep us in your employ or do we part ways?" His next comment is directed only to the rest of the group. "And of course, the next question after this is, do we keep togther as a team? We've taken serious losses- a good negotiator, a decent fighter and a nice enough bloke, and we've lost one of our mages. But I reckon we can get around this."

'... do we go back to normal?' is there any such thing as 'normal' in this line of work?
Reg is dabbing some home-fries in ketchup and regards Alastor's questions. "I don't see any problem with our current team - except maybe another gun-man would be handy." She looks at the blue elf with a raised eyebrow to see if there's interest.

The elf's eyes go back to Peri, there's still the matter of payment, and she's curious to see if he has any comment about further employment.

Alastor catches Reggie's glance at Metatron and chuckles to himself quietly before messaging her.

Reggie:

As the message sends, he catches her eye to give her a grin and a twinkle in his eyes.

"I'm afraid I already run with a team, but if you need my help in the future, Alastor knows how to contact me."

He goes back to his breakfast of pancakes, maple syrup and coffee.

Peranwyr listens and then speaks up, "Well either as a team or separate, I may well be able to point some work your way, if you are willing to work for me. Considering what you survived last night, I probably should inform if a job is for, shall we say, higher powers."

“That would be most appreciated.”?

< [Felice] @Alastor, Eury, Reggie: I suppose we discuss the team matters later and in private. >

Catches Alastors grin as the message flashes by on her glasses. She gives him a wink and nods to Metatron as he gave the answer she now was expecting.

Peri's compliment catches her off-guard and she nearly chokes down her drink but manages to control her reaction long enough to swallow. She covers up her surprise by covering her mouth, pretending to burp slightly and excuses herself.

Reg nods as Felice's message pops up.
<[SilverSfr]: Yes, some regular place where we can talk shop outside of the dragon's influence would be good. Though I must say working for him has been rather nice on my bank account...>

When Felice messages the group, he replies with:
<[Alastor]: I know a few places round town, I'll give ya some ideas- including a couple of places we've been to. But that would be a great idea though, nonetheless.>

Alastor's own reaction is shown via a very brief flash of slash marks across his cheeks and a gleam of crimson in his eyes, part out of slight shock at Perianwyr's agreement to offer work, a kick of adrenaline at the thought, and amusement at Reggie's own reaction. He smirks at her teasingly.

He turns to face Perianwyr again, and stands to offer his hand out to him to thank him. "Despite the huge risk of near-certain death on that last job. it was a pleasure doing business with you Sir, and perhaps we may do so again at some time in the future. Being informed at such a time would be appreciated."

Finally, he then turns to Metatron, and grins. "Thanks again, mate, for helping out on this one. And likewise for you, should you ever need another gun bunny along for the ride on a job, you know where to find me."

Metatron just nods and smiles.

With a breath of finally, Alastor grins again before looking at his remaining teammates. "Right, it looks like we're done here now, at least for the moment, we'll see. You guys coming?" With that, he heads away from the table, and grabs his still slightly damp coat, before turning to wait for the rest of the group and their reactions.

Reg nods, grabbing her bag from under the table as she stands up. As humans go the elf is tall and slender, but is about average height for her race. Reg elf catches up with Alastor and smiles. "I still need to get my bike, what's your plan?"

“Done. Move on. Sounds good to me.��

Felice tries to recall whether she came by foot or with her bike, she only recalls that her means of transportation only brought her to the district border; and the heavy rain.

“I need a shower, guess I'll just head to my flat now. It was a long night already. We should definitely see where we are heading now. This went pretty well and we had our share of luck, and it was definitely necessary. No need to push it, though.��