September 9th, 2074 4:45amA black shape flits up the side of a tall, domed building. Moving vertical distances no mundane human could replicate, the shape quickly reaches the roof. A faint hum and a click goes unheard on a distant corner of the Tacoma Omidome. A square section of roofing material, no more then .5 meters on a side, is lifted out of place.
Dervish's thin figure snakes into the hole, twisting and contorting as he braces herself, body held horizontally, and maneuvers the panel back into place. The space is tight, but he moves easily, as if born to tight corners and horizontal scrambling. A hand here, a foot there, placements borne not only of actual skill but of theory, technique, the mechanics of the body and detection studied ad naseum.
A short time later his thin form goes plummeting down the elevator shaft, supported by an almost invisible rope firmly attached at the top of the shaft. 40 stories whiz by in seconds, body performing a set of aerial acrobatics even
Peter Chung would be proud of as he dodges rails, outcroppings, and pneumatic fixings designed to send the high speed elevators from the top to the bottom in less then 10 seconds. Several security devices, from motion sensors to trip beams, should have been sending back data on his passage. Instead, the security logs recorded only empty shaft, over and over again.
He moves like a shadow across the expo floor, security locker after locker springing open at his touch as he touches the items the crew was looking for, verifying after each one the reception of the signal that would lead the somewhat noisier team to them later that morning.
September 9th, 2074 8:00am The crowds are already waiting outside at 8, eager to get in and begin searching for the next big thing to provide their company with a little more competitive advantage. The lines are fairly orderly, despite the large size, probably due somewhat to the squad of very obvious security arranged outside the door. People are being urged through the entrances as fast as the Matrix systems can verify their identity. A gentile orc in a classic cut custom linen suit gently pats the hand of his chromed companion, tucked under his elbow. He gives the totSec guard near his entrance a tusky grin, and his commlink chimes softly as the ID and passes are verified. The guard smiles back, eyes drifting towards the smooth, expressionless face despite
Sweetness’ odd appearance.
The pair glide into the expo center in the dome, providing an odd counterpoint to the ungraceful and occasionally frantic movement of various buyers and sellers around the floor. His companion points out various pieces as they move around the floor, murmuring quietly to him of components, software pieces, and various electronic devices. Obviously intrigued, he pauses, picking up an oddly segmented hexadecimal shaped device. There is a pop, a crackle, and a sudden hiss of black smoke from the interior of the device, and he places the item back on the table, backing away and drifting off into the crowd with an apologetic smile as increasing frantic group of salespeople and technicians crowd around the now flaming prototype. A figure in the crowd catches his eye, a slim eyebrow raising as the eye beneath tracked the motion over his shoulder. A slight touch on his companions hand, and she moves off into the crowd, briefly pausing to smile and speak in low tones with the owner of the eye. A second later
Dervish falls into step next to
Sweetness, triggering the waiting program in the commlink that would convert the physical descriptions of the owner of the pass into the expo to his own.
September 9th, 2074 8:30am The crowd continues to surge through the door, thousands of people moving into and out of the floor space. The movement shudders for a moment, one person frantically clawing his way back against the flow of the crowd, screaming in obvious panic. For a moment, the flow seems to inexplicably still, the crowd almost seeming to hold its breath, and a second cry rings out in the crowd. A third, and then a fourth follows, and the crowd seems to suddenly erupt in a frenzy, the mob taking its cues from the individual panicked members. A roar goes up, and the crowd is suddenly milling, pushing in every direction, surging against the gates and lines, pressing up against the totSec guards standing close. The guards shout, and suddenly grab at their headsets as communication is cut off, and a sharp ring of multiple feedback signals squeals out through the ‘Dome.
At the same moment, a large troll near the doorway reaches out, grabbing a hold of the nearest totSec guard and lifting him bodily off the ground, turning on heel and pitching the guard at the nearest other guard. Busy shouting at other guards, trying to regain control of the situation, the second guard was caught off guard, and the thrown body caught him full force in the chest, both of them going down. A soft
pfft follows, preceding a blinding flash and a crack of noise. At this seemingly direct assault on totSec members, the other members of the security team, scattered among the 12 gates handling people flow and the exposition floor, open fire towards
Clay, several members of the crowd being struck in the process. Rubber bullets strike flesh, not fatal but painful nonetheless, and with half the crowd blind or deaf or both, the gunfire only adds to the confusion and panic in the crowds. 1200 people surge in different directions, firmly establishing mass panic at the gates.
September 9th, 2074 8:31am Two forms flow through the crowds, hands and feet blurring as they force their way rapidly through the crowds. The two figures split up as guards draw near, and abruptly become small whirling vortexes of contained violence. The woman glides up to the guard in her path, smoothing parrying the barrel of the shotgun he holds up and out of the way with a sweeping motion of her sheathed sword. Several knife edge strikes seek vulnerable places in the armor, and the guard stands stunned for a moment. But only a moment, as
Ikari’s sweeping step drives her extended foot into the guards chest, knocking him backwards and off his feet, unconscious amid the milling crowd. The other man moving through the crowd with such intent never seems to need to reach his target, the guards head snapping back, visor cracking, with no apparent contact between them. By the time
Atreus reaches the guard, he’s been struck a half dozen times and is barely keeping his feet.
Atreus reaches out, pushing lightly against the guard’s shoulder and them moving on past him as the guard tilts back and slowly falls to the floor. The two of them meet up again, still driving through the crowds with the minimum necessary amount of applied force. Ahead of them, ARO’s light up the exposition floor of the dome, the equipment they’re looking for dotting the floor in various locations. With a nod towards a well dressed orc and an elf standing clear of the panicking mob, they move off across the floor. They easily intercept guards, who are singled out, lacking communication, and easily ambushed in the roaring crowd. Occasionally they make stops, grabbing handfuls of software chips or boxes of components and other electronics. Across the floor, the orc and the elf make a similar path, and although guards are encountered less frequently, they are no less unconscious when the pair leave them.
Ghosting to the various slaves on the security node,
Porter follows the teams progress, foiling efforts to get the communications back online. While the BattleTac like system must have been devastating when well coordinated, when taken offline the systems were so much dead weight. He tapped camera after camera, observing with grim approval as the requested items are removed from various vendor displays. Suddenly, the next camera he jumped to was looped. The editing definitely wasn’t his work, to much finesse and too little force. The camera seemed to be pointed at a small oasis of calm.
Slipping past the loop, he calls up the feed. A half dozen people had taken cover from the panicking crowd and the gunfire in the booth of a commlink manufacturer. A tall elf, suit slightly wrinkled and hanging off his slim frame stood next to a thin female, possibly Latino. As
Porter watches, the man seems to reach for a small plastic case next to several people that obviously work at the booth. They seem unware, and considering the amount of chaos happening outside the booth it wasn’t unreasonable. The elf picked up the case, but must have been heard, as several of the employees turn to look in his direction. He quickly flips the case behind the backs of the employees towards the Hispanic woman as they turn, who snatches it out of the air and seems to put something
in to the case. Another series of semi-automatic gunfire rings out on the floor, and the employees turn back to look outside. As they do, she flips the case back to the elf, turning to engage the group of employees in conversation as he puts the case back on the table, apparently none the worse for the wear.
With a nod from him, they both obviously take their leave and begin to move towards the exit of the booth. Before he leaves, the elf suddenly turns and shouts, and makes an awkward lunge towards the table, belying the grace he’d displayed in moving before. The employees obviously notice, and several of them throw themselves at the elf, pushing him back while another grabs the case and curls protectively around it, rushing further back in the booth. Throwing up his hands in surrender, the elf flails around and extricates himself from the group, dashing off into the crowd. A female elf, obviously part of the employees of the booth, screams incoherently and looks around, grabbing the first thing that comes to hand and throwing it at the elf. The Latina seems to have disappeared sometime during the struggle.
The feed is suddenly cut off, and
Porter finds himself face to face with an odd looking
icon. She’s grinning impishly, and seems to be surrounded by a number of smaller programs, flitting and crawling around her in constant motion. She wiggles her fingers, and several of the smaller icons flock towards him. He stretches his hand back, a sledgehammer appearing in it as he starts to swing it forward, colliding squarely with one of the small icons and crushing it, the individual bytes dissipating in the ether. The rest of the icons dive at him, slashing and cutting at the algorithms that hold his icon together, de-rezzing little bits and pieces as they attempt to recreate “The Death of a Thousand Cuts.�
Porter crushes another tiny program, and sends the sledgehammer whistling towards the fragile female figure’s head. At the last moment, she seems to glide out of the way, spreading her fingers forth and drawing a small machine pistol out of the ether. A stream of fire speeds towards
Porter, clattering and pinging as they ricochet off his chest, none actually penetrating the armor.
Both virtual forms turn as a larger icon rezzes in, the colossal form of a Western Dragon looming over the two combatants. The black reptile eyes them both with a large yellowish orb nearly the size of each of them, and inhales. Both of the hackers scramble to get out of the way as a wash of acid streams through virtual space, burning through parts of
Porter’s armor and severing several of the connections the slim female seems to have attached to the VR world around her. The two exchange glances from either side of the gargantuan IC, and nod, darting forward nearly simultaneously. Glittering trails left by the horde of small icons dance around the dragons head, causing the creature to roar and whip its head back and forth as small cuts appear in the creatures hide.
Porter brings the sledgehammer around in a long arc, colliding with the mass of the beast at the same instant that a steady stream of bullets from the females twin machine pistols chew a path up the creatures flanks. It lets out one single long roar, and de-rezzes back into the virtual space. Panting, the two look at each other for a long moment before both looking up and away as a pair of matching roars echo through the node, heralding the eminent arrival of more IC. With a grin from the female and a grunt from
Porter they turn, darting off in opposite directions.
September 9th, 2074 8:33am Security’s coming back online. I recommend you be gone when it happensSweetness and
Dervish send affirmatives back over the runner groups radio’s, and grab the last item on their list. Dodging back through the thinning crowd, they move rapidly towards the door, eluding the dwindling number of conscious guards on the floor. Suddenly, in front of them, a pair of forms materialize, each one a huge pile of sand and earth, concrete blocks and bits of asphalt in a vaguely humanoid form. Both of the earth spirits give a roar that sound like an avalanche and raise massive hands over their heads, sending them crashing down towards the pair. Out of nowhere, a bare blade collides with one descending fist.
Ikari is driven to her knees, but she parries the fist and leaps forward, driving the blade into the creatures body and whipping it out as she dances around it. The other spirit stumbles backwards, arms flailing as if it’s being knocked almost off its feet.
Atreus appears from the crowd, each step accompanied by a rhythmic series of strikes and kicks, still more than 5 meters from the spirit but obviously striking it over and over again.
Sweetness and
Dervish dart out around the occupied spirits and press into the crowd, quickly loosing themselves in the flow that is slowly beginning to consolidate into an outward movement.
Outside, they are quickly joined by
Ikari and
Atreus, the spirits apparently dispatched.
Clay tosses another guard out of the way and wades through the crowd, most of it composed of people only as high as his waits or stomach, and joins the other four. Finding themselves in a spot of calm for a brief moment, the group comes face to face with a tall elf in a rumpled suit, a slightly shorter elf in a much neater looking suit, and an athletic looking Latina sporting Actioneer. Behind them, a guard seems to spot the group standing out from the crowd and shouts, motioning with his rifle for them to hit the ground. He raises the rifle to his shoulder to fire, and abruptly doubles over, gasping and grasping at his chest. The elf flashes a smile towards the sky, and the trio turn and dart off into the crowd.
In the distance, sirens can be heard. Much closer, the metallic
clang of heavily armored feet on concrete sound through the crowd, and a squad of totSec guards, decked out in heavy mil-spec armor, come piling out of an ATV that is still sliding into the parking lot from the direction the trio took off in.
Sweetness gives a bow and sweeps an arm out, indicating ladies first, in a direction away from the new contingent of heavily armed guards, and the group leaves, pushing through the last of the panicked mob and breaking out into clear streets and escape.
September 9th, 2074 10:33am The living room floor of the safe house looks like a house with 12 kids 2 hours after Christmas morning. Containers and wrappers for dozens of different pieces of equipment litter the floor, and
Porter actually seems less surly as he moves through the collection, cataloging and counting.
Screamsheets and newsnodes are plastered with pictures and rumors about what happened at the ‘Dome. TotSec is doing its best to keep the details under wraps, but the newscorps are screaming about corporate invasions, heavily armed death squads, mass raiding, and all sorts of other conjecture. Descriptions of the composition of the group that attacked the Omnidome ranges from a group of ninja-sararimen to an all troll Bliztball team and on up to AAA corp black ops. The extent of the damage is still being determined, but both the Tacoma Omnidome Management Team and Total Security have made public statements that they will be devoting all of their efforts towards finding the people that did this, and bringing them to justice. Screamsheet announcers comment on the ominous tone of that particular phrase.