Several quiet pops replace the thunderous boom that the team expects. The room quickly fills with a burning, choking smoke. Small bits of metal create burns on exposed flesh and tickle the back of your throat.

Al

Curls of smoke begin to creep under the door to the bathroom. Outside, the feed from Clara shows Hayden preparing to open the front door. Her hands are filled with her coffee cup, purse and keys. The back alley near the rear door is still not showing any signs of activity.

Sun and Ryan
With the billowing smoke flooding to fill the main room, lazy arms reach out into the office. The cloud seems to test the air before advancing further into the room. It will probably fill the first meter or two within a few seconds if the door isn't closed quickly.

Ryan watches the billowing smoke roll towards him for only a moment before moving to act. Swearing yet again, this time in Sperethiel, the elf let the Roomsweeper in his left hand fall to join the already discarded pair of Colts as he moves to close the office door, his now-free hand reaching into his jacket to retrieve his respirator.

Pesto
Coughing as the smoke pours over the bar, you start to feel light-headed. Your extremities begin to feel heavy and then you stop feeling them. In the back of your mind, a small part of you screams that something isn't right.

Bubbles
With your breath held, the worst of the effects seem to be your eyes watering from the small flecks of burning metal and smoke. There is a slight tingling on your lips and nose.

Ryan
The door swings shut with a tap from your foot as you pull on your respirator. Without the light from the rest of the bar, the office gets darker, illuminated by just a small desklamp near Sun and your subdued victim.

Seeing and hearing gas instead of a boom Pesto sputters a bit before feeling really strange. He reaches back into his pack and grabs the respirator he carries in there and places it on his face.

Not sure what to do next the orc takes a quick look at Clara's feed and wonders why they only see normal activity from the front door. 'Damn, some hacker may have compromised my girl', he thinks as he opens an AR window into Clara's node and runs an analyze program.

Pesto
With the respirator on, you can feel the warmth of your breath push back against your skin. Reaching out to Clara with a thought, you look around the drone's interior node for signs of an intruder. Standing in the middle of the virtual room is a china doll.

As you enter the node, it turns and the porcelain face opens to show rows of jagged ceramic teeth. The feral child runs with stumpy legs towards you.

Ryan and Sun
The door swings open and slams shut again as Mitch comes stumbling into the room. Heavily coughing to clear the smoke from his lungs, the abused man collapses against the wall just outside the cloud.

Sun
You've seen Mitch's skill with his hands before, watching him lift the pillbox earlier. As he comes into the room, one of the discarded guns vanishes into a space between Mitch's jacket and the wall he's leaning against.

It does not appear that Ryan noticed.

Sun shifts to put the prisoner between herself and Mitch not seeming to have noticed his pick up.

Flint

Ryan
Kneeling down with your respirator on, you pick up the street sweeper. You quickly notice that one of the Colts with stick n shock is missing.

Bubbles
Pressure builds in your chest as you keep your breath held and the smoke irritates your eyes and nose. Backing into the corner behind the bar, you make yourself as inconspicuous as possible.

Crouching next to the door with his back to the office wall, Ryan gives a quick nod of acknowledgment to Sun, then motions for her to take cover. While his eyes and guns cover the entryway, he mentally adjusts his augmented hearing to try and get a better idea of just what is happening on the other side of that door.

Ryan
Sound is muted by the door, but the augmentations make up for the difficulties. Outside the office, there are sounds of high heel shoes stepping softly on hard tile. Your best guess is that a woman is entering from the back door and is about halfway down the hallway.

In the edge of your vision, you see Mitch's eyes roll back into his head as his body goes limp.

Al waited, finger on trigger, as three long seconds ticked by. But not only did nothing crash through the bathroom door, but he heard no real ruckus out in the bar. And the girl outside just kept fishing for her keys.

Hell, maybe ain't no gas mask-wearin' H&K-totin' ninjas gon' come in here ta kill pore Al after all, he mused.

He didn't take his finger off the trigger, but he spared a breath to whisper into his commlink - "Clara shows an' has shown no movement out back. Waitress don' seem to have a clue anything's happenin'."

Then he went back to silently cursing himself for leaving his air tank dry.

Keeping low, the Roomsweeper steadily covering the entryway, Ryan reaches up with his right hand and slowly opens the office door.

Ryan
The door slowly opens, making it easier to hear the sounds of high heels on tile. You are fairly sure that the intruder is between you and the back door. As the smoke pours over you, your eyes begin to water lightly and minor burns of hot metal scorch the exposed parts of your cheeks and hands.

In the Office

With Ryan crouched near the door, it's only instinct that saves him. The gunslinger throws himself back as Mitch raises the purloined pistol.

"The major can fuck off."

Two shots sound. The first round catches Ryan in the thigh, surging with electrical energy. The second round misses and slams into the wall behind him.

'I knew it', Pesto thinks as he sees the China doll. Before taking care of the intruder he gives the team a quick subvocalized message:

"Clara's been compromised, working on it now!"

The rigger then launches an attack against the troublesome doll which consists of smaller sauce covered meatballs thrown at his opponent.

Al liked his spot. He figured he'd be hard to spot quick, hard to hit, and he had a good shot at anyone coming in.

And the floor didn't smell too much like piss.

With all that weird smoke out there, he reckoned the smart play was to stay right where he was, at least until he'd hobbled the first ninja-monkey through the door.

But then he heard a couple of sharp cracks from Ryan's Colts, followed by the revelation from Pesto that everything he was watching on his comm was crookeder than a moneychanger in the Temple, and it was time to move.

He didn't know these folks real well, but they'd signed on together, signed on for a job, and that meant something to Al, whether it was real work or this shadowrunner lunacy.

So by the time he'd worked himself to his feet in the back stall, his medkit was lying open on the floor and the oxy-cap was in his grip. Mangled as the burned wreck of his hand was, the fingers worked with preternatural speed - still holding the shotgun in his right hand, with his left he popped the cap, got under his shirt and had the thing mated to the nozzle under his ribs before he got to the bathroom door. With a flick of his index finger he let the thing rip - it'd take a few ticks to empty, but it'd feed his tank air faster than he'd be able to use it. A mental tweak through his DNI and he'd shunted his esophogeal airway to the internal supply - even if he got gut punched, he could suck air all morning and it'd never reach his system.

And neither would his tobacco. Annoyed, he spit his butt on the floor.

Instantly he had that odd feeling - he'd gotten used to it a decade back - of breathing but not breathing. He wasn't worried about his eyes either - they were so low grade they didn't even have pain receptors. Ready for anything, he reached for the door.

Pesto

The psycho doll seems to fade from sight as meatballs fly through the now empty space. She reappears a meter or so to the right of you. Like a feral dog, the doll charges towards you, teeth gnashing.

As you build up a defense against the attack, she is gone. There are no signs of her logging off. The doll has simply vanished.

Bubbles

Crouched down by the bar, it's difficult to make out much of what is going on in the hallway. The smoke is filled with looming threats and possibilities. You can hear the gunshots and Mitch's words, followed by the sounds of boots scraping on the floor. Without the dull thud of a body crumpling, it's likely that whoever Mitch shot is still standing.

In the hallway the quiet sound of a gun clearing leather can be heard, but the shapes are indistinct.

All
Image links that were subscribed to Clara's feed flicker for a second. Hayden is no longer standing at the front door. From the rear of the building, the back door stands open with smoke slowly creeping out and disipating.

All
The smoke begins to thin in the bar, dispersing into the corners. It is still difficult to make out any more than indistinct shapes. As the lights turn on throughout the bar, forms become dark shadows within the smoke.

Within the office, it's become clear that Mitch has betrayed the team. What is unclear is whether this is a new development or something he planned from the beginning...

Quick to recover his balance on his somewhat shaky leg, Flintlock reacts instinctively to the new situation. The big revolver roars when the elf flings a shot in Mitch's direction mid-roll before letting loose with the Roomsweeper at knee height through the open office doorway.

All
From his crouched position, Mitch does his best to roll out of the way. Unfortunately his best isn't good enough. The bullet tears through his jacket and removes large chunks of his shoulder. Arterial spurts show the wound can be mortal if medical attention isn't given.

Despite the damage, Mitch looks to still be moving--unphased by the lack of responsiveness in his arm.

The bellow of gunfire in the hallway clears a small pocket of the smoke. Before it fills, Ryan is able to see Hayden get out of the way at the last second. Placing a foot into the wall, she half jumps and shifts her weight placing her other foot on the opposite wall. No magic aids her in sticking to the walls and she comes back down to her feet in a crouch as the smoke fills the area again.

Sun suddenly surges towards Mitch a single gloved hand darting out towards his leg.

In the Office
Having seen Sun's previous hesitation, Mitch keeps most of his focus on Ryan. With the young elf surging forward, Mitch throws his arm out to knock her sprawling. The damaged shoulder betrays him and turns the motion into flopping flesh. A quiet jolt of energy courses through the drug hound's leg from Sun's glove.

It's apparent that Sun has just come onto the radar as a threat.

Pesto
You pull up a system subroutine that analyzes data flow and processes. The report shows that you are the only user accessing this node. When you do the same to the security log for account usage, no accounts have been made or modified.

All
On the tails of gunfire in the hallway, Al swings the bathroom door open. He levels the shotgun at Hayden's midsection and fires. Moving in a blur of speed, she takes a step forward and parries the barrel into the wall where the explosive round tears a large hole in it.

Just like fighting on the riverboat, Al drops the barrel down below the woman's arm and swings it back into her. The second shot takes her by surprise. Driving her back and to the ground, a pool of blood begins to form in the hallway.

"Take yer shoes off, darlin'. Set a spell."

Far from certain the wily woman was no longer a threat, Al shifted forward to just out of kicking range and trained his Remington on her head. His instincts told him to finish her off, but he liked to go easy on the fairer sex.

"Reckon I got 'er," he called out to the bar at large, silently thanking Agwe, and the Good Lord, too, that he'd come through another scrape in one piece.

With Al's report, Ryan turns his full attention to the still-mobile Mitch. The elf brings the big revolver to bear, taking deliberate aim before squeezing off a shot at the drug-crazed target.

All

A single last shot rings through the bar as Mitch crumples to the ground. The entry wound between his eyes is just large enough for a credstick to fit into. On the other hand, the exit wound would fit Bubble's fist.

The smoke begins to clear.

Assessing the situation, you have one dead shadowrunner, a bartender who is bleeding out in the hallway and an unconscious bartender in the office. With the combination of the rising sun and the sounds of a gunfight, you think you have less than twenty minutes before LoneStar will respond.

Sparing a glance through the now open office door, the first thing (naturally) that Al's eyes went to was the unconscious bar skell-cum-poison purveyor - NAKED!

How in the name o' Lady Godiva did I miss out on that?!

Then his eyes went to Mitch...and then the smoking gun in Flint's hand...

Resisting the urge to take his Remington off Hayden's moaning form, he did his best to keep one eye on her and one on the elves. "Ghede's gonads, Spock! Whaddja do to pore Mitch?"

Sun glances at Al, "He started it sweety. Flint just seems to have differing idea of what consitutes alive to me."

Sun shrugs and mentally deactivates her shockgloves.

Flint holsters the revolver as he looks around at the rest of the group.

"Still movin' mean still a threat in my book." The elf pauses and shrugs. "... 'Sides, ya still got one 'live 'nough t' talk."

Shrugging again as if that was the end of the matter, Ryan sets about collecting and reloading his scattered weaponry.

Not satisfied in finding nothing in his immediate search of Clara's systems, Pesto starts to dig deeper. The orc starts to look through all files and programs for the slightest hint that something is not what it seems.

The crack of a single gunshot pauses Pesto leaving him to wonder what is coming next.

Al's gaze went from the naked girl to the bleeding one, and he answered Flint - "Two, if'n I work fast." Question is, what in the name o' Florence Nightengale we gon' do with 'em? he thought, but kept it to himself, not knowing if they could hear him and not wanting to queer Sun's questioning.

He looked again at the hole in Mitch's head. Based on some things he'd been thinking on, he believed the elves, and didn't blame Flint - once the lead started flying plans tended to get a lot less complex - it was just the desk jockeys that tried to second guess working folk. Still..."Damn shame anyhows. Less'n I miss my guess, he warn't hardly actin' on his own recognizance. Reckon I blame this'un," he spat, glancing down the sights of his shotgun at the fallen girl. "Disinclines me, somewhat, ta patch her up. Whaddaya say, Sunny, she worth the effort?"

*** POP ***

<<Shooting stopped?>>

Glancing down at his 'link, Al calls out to the bar at large, "Coast looks clear, Yer Radiance."

Finished tending to his weapons, Ryan pulls a smoke from the pack still sitting on the bar, then wanders over to where the girl lies bleeding on the floor.

"If yer askin' me, I say we take the slitch in the office with us, and just finish this one off."

He looks around at the rest of the group, meeting each of their eyes before continuing with a wink and a touch of a smile.

"Don't worry. I'll do it."

The smaller man licked his lips.

He paused to sniff the air, then switched back to normal breathing, his left hand absently detaching the oxy-cap he'd attached to himself.

With a shrug, he said, "Drugs is of the devil, an' they knew the job wuz dangerous when they took it. Still an' all...yore way's shore 'nuff the easiest, but the thing is, ya already done talked to birthday suit, an' bleeder here's the smarter of the two. If'n yore gon' take jist one..."

Just for fun, he pitched his voice just loud enough that the girl on the ground could hear it, assuming she was still conscious....

Ryan shrugs again, and wanders back to lean against the bar, unconsciously rubbing his thigh.

"Don't make no diff'rence to me. I ain't carryin' her, so I don't have t'worry the mess."

At the last, he turns and gazes pointedly at Bubbles, a highly-amused look crossing his face.

Al watched the girl bleed as they debated her fate. If he waited any longer, they wouldn't even have a choice. But it just seemed too ironic to patch her up only to have someone put a bullet in her head.

"Alrighty, then. If I kin git this one stabilized, we take her. If not, we take the one in the chair." He didn't elaborate on the fate of whichever was left behind.

"Someone cover this one while I collect my shit."

Once someone was watching the woman, he went and collected his medkit from where he'd left it on the floor of the bathroom.

With the medkit in hand, Al takes a knee. The pool of blood surrounding the woman begins to seep into the patch of fabric but there's nothing to be done for it. A few seconds later the woman is stabilized and bandaged enough to stop bleeding further. She will still need medical attention before she can regain consciousness.

While the medkit works to stabilize the woman, it also lists out several unknown compounds in her bloodstream.

Hearing that everything is clear and the team is safe for the moment, Pesto goes back to work. While he is analyzing all of Clara's systems more thoroughly he sends the drone around the bar looking for anything out of the ordinary or anyone paying close attention to it.

Quickly growing bored with just watching and waiting, especially after the short and somewhat anti-climactic firefight, Ryan viciously stabs his cigarette out on the bar and strides over to the bleeding woman.

Working around Al, but not terribly concerned with being gentle, the elf proceeds to strip the wounded captive down in the same manner as the other one still in the office. While he's at it Ryan checks for any sign of hidden weapons, throwing the belongings in a pile for one of the electronics experts to deal with.

Quickly growing bored with just watching and waiting, especially after the short and somewhat anti-climactic firefight, Ryan viciously stabs his cigarette out on the bar and strides over to the bleeding woman.

Working around Al, but not terribly concerned with being gentle, the elf proceeds to strip the wounded captive down in the same manner as the other one still in the office. While he's at it Ryan checks for any sign of hidden weapons, throwing the belongings in a pile for one of the electronics experts to deal with.

Al stood up and surveyed his work. Thanks to Flint the woman was now searched and stripped, but the damage his EX slug had done at point-blank range had been considerable, and the sight was in no way titillating. Still, she was stable, and he said as much to his companions.
"Should be safe to move 'er once Pesto pulls the van around. I kin wake 'er up after we's good an' gone, which I reckon it's high time for."

He looked back down at the listing of weird substances in her blood, then down at the stain on the right knee of his olive-drab fatigue trousers. He pulled his knife and, rubber gloves still on, he cut the stained portion free of his pants. "Bubbles, this chica's blood is fulla some strange shit - ya might wanna scan 'er fer more o' them nanite drug signals before we drag 'er along with us," he said as he applied a disinfectant wipe to his knee and then examined his boots to make sure they were untainted as well.

Then he hit the touch-screen on the diagnostic unit, telling it to save this patient's blood data.

Pushing the half keg around the corner Bubbles poked her head around under the bar top and from her position on her hands and knees viewed the carnage. After a sniff at the air through her nose she removed the dispensing tube from her mouth and carefully peeled her wad of gum sealing the tube to the empty half keg.

"Beer fumes give me gas."

Smiling at the elf and flexing her arms as she stands up, popping her gum back in her mouth, she shakes her head and starts heading into the office to carry people out.

"These two better be worth more then the beer I am missing out on."

Idly one her way past the bar Bubbles slides out her jammer wand and turns it on, keeping it pointed down away from her head, and holding it out to the elf, holding it between a couple of stubby fingers flipping it up and down to demonstrate it's light weight "Think you can handle this?"

Bubbles grins at the gun slinging elf. *** POP ***

Watching Bubbles using the jammer brought a smile of approval to Al's haggard features. Between subcutaneous RFIDs and aerosol clouds that broadcast signals...hell, there was just no way to be safe enough if they were going to be transporting these chicas around.

Looking again at Mitch, then at the respirators coming off his companions, he asked to no one in particular - "Our boy get a lungful o' that crap?"

With a slightly disdainful look, Ryan takes the jammer from the troll, holding it out and away from himself as if it were covered in raw sewage.

Rapidly, Bubbles grabs the nearest sets of large sheets of material and steps into the office to start wrapping.

"Whoa, miscounted." laying down the sheets, she rapidly starts bundling things for dragging out.

"Dunno 'bout that. The dead junkie's a waste of space. Might be best t' just leave 'im here."

With a bit of strain she drags the bodies out through the room.

"Ghoul meat or fish bait. Less questions from Star."

Bubbles winks, "Blood n brain bits could be from last nights brawling."