Nova saw the man collapse into a lump while floating in the air, then turned to Sharkboy, who was standing right next to her.

"You help her, I'll get a quick look-around and get the other guy down. Ok?"

Anna slowly levitated the man closer to her, planning to stabilize the man and then take him to the van. He was not very useful dead - unless they wanted to get into the used cyberware department, but that was a bit too evil to Anna. She did not want him dead but had a creeping feeling that her colleagues would not let him live.

>> bnc, on my way but levitation is slow, can you get to me?

"on the move"
bnc distractedly moves the van over to the flying Assault while flipping a switch of her deck configurator, maximizing the data processing power of her gear. She then runs her most powerful search program to locate Eliza's enemy.

It didn't take long to locate Eliza. Her avatar had her computerized face and looked otherwise like some kind of old fashioned school teacher or headmistress. She used a ruler to parry the attacks of a persona, that looked very much like the liquid metal terminator from that 80 year old flick. Both were fighting very defensively. Just as Eliza attacked again, hitting the metal man with a rubber stamp, the metal dissolved and vanished from view.
Eliza turned to bnc: <<The decker learned from his previous encounter with me. He tries to goad me into frontal attacks so I would hurt myself. But whenever I MARK him, he scrubs himself and vanishes from sight.>>

Meanhwile, Wraith and his spirit observed how the two guardian spirits just left the astral and vanished as well.

Before Wraith could issue a new command, his spiritual follower dashed downwards to the lowest level of the building, where it looked a trace of the runaway mage.

The spirit dashed into the cellar but found it's way blocked after 13 m by the solid ground of the compacted earth.

It took a few moments before it reported back: "He must have fled through one of the many pipes that go down through this building. My astral form is to large to fit through them into the ground."

Anna touches the merc, and cast the stabilize spell saying "Easy tiger, we only want to talk.". Spell over, and man stabilized she navigate him through the door of the van and then follows herself inside. Her face is glowing, and she feels excited and alive. She orders the spirit to clean up the astral signatures from the battlefield, and heartfully thanks her"Thank you, friend, your commitment was heart touching. You are always welcome to visit me. As the last service I'd ask you to erase the signs of my magic from the battlefield and then you are free. I... will miss you. "

Nova moved back into the appartement to have a look-around. Maybe there were any clues left by the mage, that would help them in some way.

Nova looked around the still smoldering - and in some cases actually burning appartment. There had been chalk markings as well as something that looked like strewn about herbs on the floor. The mercenary had left the bag behind from which he had taken the AK. Inside were a few more grenades as well as a sealed plastic container with the dimensions of 40x30x20 cm³ with a "Warning, do not open" sticker on it. The container felt heavy and seemed to have been sealed with some kind of wax along the metallic edges.
Otherwise there still lied the enormous Naginata on the ground as well as the mage's clothes - a well tailored suit, covered with funny looking symbols and sewn on wire forms. It's pockets were empty safe for a saphire knife and an expensive looking commlink from Transsy.

bnc shuts down a prog or two to create processing power to launch an attack. To her surprise, apparently the enemy hacker didn't reckon with a straight-forward data spike. With all the moving and evading, he completely missed the fist of powerful code right into his face. The icon vanishes immediately.

(@Eliza) "Hope I di'nt spoil your fight, ma'am. Do you wanna drive the van yourself or shall I?"
(@Team) "How's that tough foramen culi? Need a hand? Don't cast a Heal spell 'fore I'm done with him, baby girl"

Nova quickly checked Battery's body as well, looking for his commlink especially, but also to grab any weapons he had, and ammo, of course. Then she put everything into Assault's bag together with the rest (including that knife and commlink from the mage's clothes; the suit itself will stay there), careful not to damage that weird container. On second thought, she pulled out the two commlinks again and powered them down before placing them back into the bag. She took a few pictures from the ritual stuff (the chalk markings and the suit even), grabbed that naginata and headed down to the van on the quickest route, her own rifle slung over her shoulder.

Once at the van, she reported her findings to the others: "Okay, I got most of what I could find up there in here. Some weapons, some weird knives, commlinks - shut them down for now. Probably some of that stuff will allow them to find us, so might be good if you took a look into that. I am not very versed in the magical arts, so anything on that front? Took some pictures of what that mage was doing up there. Not sure how useful they will be. Oh, and there is this weird little container, with 'do not open' written on it. Probably has something to do with that ritual, I reckon. Should have a good look into that one as well, but probably not right here."

Sharkboy loosened the tension on the bow, and left the window to start heading out of the apartment. Along the way he picked up the auto-shotty that he had thrown out of one of the merc's hands.

"We done here?"

Seeing that the spirits had dissapeared, Wraith answered his spirits rapport that the mage had gotten away. You've done all you could, thank you. I have to get back to my body and dissapear from here - could you make our astral fingerprints dissappear as well?

With that, he returned to his physical body down in the janitor's flat.


He got up, shook his fingers to get a feeling for his physical limbs again.
"Mage's fled down the sewers, impossible to follow him. Otw now, by bike."
With that he ran towards the now broken door and his bike outside, grabbing the bottle of beer with his DNA on it as well as a scarf from Herr Nagl's coathanger so he could somewhat hide his face from cameras discreetly.

The janitor heeded Wraith's warning and appeared a minute later with a packed bag "Don't worry about me, I have friends where I can stay"

It didn't take long for the team to gather up their things, smush evidence and get away before the police arrived.

Eliza answered bnc: <<Thanks, that was quite the attack. Just goes to show what an unexpected angle of attack can do. Take the wheel for the moment, I have to contact the Boss.>>

“Wraith, where's the strudl?"

"Don't worry, I got the package with me, don''t wanna lead them straight to her. Delivery incoming.", and he prepared to join the team inside the van.

"We should be able to follow him if he just went down into the sewer, at least for a short distance. They're usually pretty well marked for the service techs, and you can navigate them for long distances if you know how to find a layout and determine your starting location on the public grid... Sharkboy paused and considered what he was saying.

"I'd be volunteering myself, wouldn't I?"

Anna replies to bnc "I already stabilized him, so he is not going to bleed out. He is ready for you, though as dangerous as he his I am uncomfortable with bringing him back unless everyone is ready." She takes a quick astral look at their loot, trying to feel if any of that is bound foci that can be used to track the mage (or them) or is otherwise emotionally significant. Anna replies to Shark still blushed and high on adrenaline "Hold on a moment..." she says as she seems distracted and examines the items from the mage. No she did not want to go after the mage, but she also did not want him to go after them - or worse his organization.

"I would say, we should take a long drive out of the city and find some place where we won't get disturbed. There we can tie him up and restrain him, before waking him up. Do you guys have any means to make him talk? Because I somewhat doubt he will be very cooperative. In the meantime, could you look over all the stuff and see if anything is still linked up somehow, bnc? Don't want them to follow us that way, right? He might have something implanted, too. And then there is that weird box, also... does that make any sense to anyone?" Nova asked.

"I don't think we can catch the mage from here. I don't know what mojo he flings, but no-one should go after him alone, even if they could. Jump in!
Wraith and/or Anna, can you investigate the box first? If it's non-mag, I'll take a look myself."
Despite her words, bnc herselfs take a look at the box, right after she ordered the van to drive them to Prague to get it moving towards the Autobahn and rebooted her deck.



"We should make the elemental real quick. What kind of hideout do we want? I know a place with a real, like real mean background count not far from here. It's in a rural area and seated on top of a hill. That might buy us some several hours. Or do you want somewhere else?

Ah, und someone restrain that bugger over there. If he wakes up, it'll be a mess. Someone's got cuffs or something?"

Once the van is moving, bnc checks for any matrix signals emitted from the gear they captured.

The box is very heavy. Looking closer, the plastic seems to be only a coating around a metal box - likely stainless steel or lead. The seal is airtight and smells faintly of wax. Shaking it produces only the faintest of rattling noise. Possibly glas ware inside a protective filling. As far as boxes of Pandora go, this one seems to be well secured.

Anna updates the team "The axe is likely bounded to the the dead mercenary. The box likely stores alchemical preperation... and I sense an infected touching it., perhaps the mage considering he turns to myst. The knifes are murder weapons as well... At this point I expect them to be amoral."

She does have restraints but for roleplaying rather than restraining robocop."Wraith can read minds" she reminds bnc.

"Bnc, Elizia, if you can make sure nobody's tracking my bike, I'd like to keep it running online.", Wraith said once he had checked astral vision for any followers and then joined the others inside the van, where he placed the strudel on a corner.
He had only taken a quick glance at the sealed box. From his time working for a talismonger, he knew that alchemists used such containers to store their preparations, but apart from that, he was mostly clueless.

"About the mage:", he replied to Sharkboy's suggestion, "He somehow weaseled down quite narrow pipes, way too small for us. So only thing I could think of is changing into small critters and searching for an entrance - whicht leaves us totally vulnerable, even if we find one."

He turned towards Nova. "We don't need him to talk, I'll use the same spell from earlier, that should get us straight into his memories. Preferably while he's still unconscious, makes it easier. So... let's do it as soon as we know we're not followed, shall we?"
Taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves, he glanced towards Nova and Sharkboy. "You got him under control, right?"

Eliza replied: <<Sure, I'll watch your back>>

Anna says "you sure that you want to do it in the car? I was thinking of having him levitated and as he has nothing to throw or fire, he'll be helpless. As soon as he regains consciousness he may escape. The guy took multiple sniper rifle hits without falling, we can never be too careful.

Speaking of careful... we might want to ditch the Axe it is a weapon focus and is searchable by spirits. I can envelop it with a mana barrier to make it difficult to find, but as long as we have it the mage is likely able to track us down. It is no big deal if we get very far from here, but to the very least let's ship it to the other side of the country and let it cool down. I don't want it in the car with us. "

Wraith nodded towards Anna's suggestion. "Yeah, you're probably right. We might actually have to wake him up to cast the spell, so levitation sounds great. So let's do it once we've found a safe spot."

He thought a moment about the axe.
"I agree that we should ditch it as soon as possible. Or... perhaps we could actually use it to stoke the tensions between the Crusaders and the Harvesters.
I mean, Harvesters know nothing about us yet, only that we're meddling with their affairs. From all they know, we might as well be hired by the opposing faction, those chiphead-Crusaders.
Now so far their rivalry hasn't escalated... but if this axe found its way into a Crusader's cellar or so - somewhere where the Harvesters will find it - it would look like they were the ones behind our attack. And I could imagine our Harvester-mage would wanna set an example so the chipheads never again dare to mess with them.

Might throw them into an all-out feude as well as hide the fact that there's actually a third party involved."

Anna shrugged "bnc, he'll be up in less than an hour. We need to find some suitable interogation place, BGC is fine - but if it is too high Wraith cannot do his mojo. A forest or some wilderness is the best in my opinion. A bad neighborhood when nobody would care would also work. "

"Wakata. Mühlviertel it is, then. Twenty minutes from here there's nothing like hills and trees. Shark, just in case he'll wake up sooner, please make sure he doesn't ex anybody. Wraith, awesome thinking. I'll dig something up. Can you ditch the axe on your bike then follow us?
Invite me for a mark then turn it so silent mode."

bnc, body still unmoving, starts to take some precautions. First, she sets her agent to watch the car, her deck, and Wraith's bike for incoming marks.
After that, she launches into the Crusader forums, using her one of the hacked accounts, and tries to find clues for Linz-located Crusaders, using all her abilities - from mere deduction to hacking - to find the location of one their Linz cells.

Once all is prepared, she loads the Wrapper program and swaps the van's and one of her Noizquito's icon, hopefully fooling anyone who tries to follow them to go chasing the Noizquito instead. The Noizquito, too, gets its destination route set to Prague. As soon as they leave the route to cut into the woods of the Mühlviertel, bnc will release the Noizquito to go in its own journey.

Leaving the city works without further problems. Finding a hangout of the crusaders isn't particularly difficult, but bnc soon notices that at best two or three of them hang out at the same place at the same time. A dive bar with an illegal BTL hangout in the back seems to be the best bet to place the axe.

Far enough from Linz the team finds a nicely secluded place where an interrogation can occur without the risk of being spotted by passers-bys or a searching spirit.

The merc is still out and his gear wireless off. Crusted blood adorns both his full body armor and the insides of his helmet. His breathing is shallow and a tentative try to read his mind shows that while unconscious there just is nothing to read there.

The drive is an existential experience as if it happens to someone else. One guard dead murdered killed in the middle of combat and the other took so many bullets that Anna wonders how it is even possible. Still, between modern medicine and her magic, they are likely able to get him back to his feet, unless Nova will try to murder him as well. Gosh, she was many things - but she did not kill people it was a line. She hassled them, stole for them, conned them but violence was self-defense. Truth be told, her education was based on the bible, an eye for an eye, and her real name Yael was the name of women that hid a fleeing general, gave him milk and then as he fell asleep murdered him. Her parents were all for subterfuge and even murder to get ahead with life. Yet, unlike them - she had the potential to develop abilities to harm people simply by thinking about it. This kind of potential was a bit terrifying and so Yael drew lines and tried to stay within them. She did not want to end up addicted to power like that charming Blood Mage.

Blood mage, vampire mage... why are all the superior mages so antagonists won't she ever find an experienced chaos mage to really share her experience with? Her train of thought is cut as they arrive in the wood. A creeping fear gets into her heart when she realizes that the place is not only ideal for interrogation, it is also ideal for murder.

"bnc, when you are ready to wake him up, I'll levitate him so that he wakes up floating in mid-air. Wraith do you need to actually touch him or is a line of sight enough for the spell?"

Wraith wasn't up for smalltalk on the way from Linz and so he was quite thankful for bnc's suggestion to transport the axe on his bike.
He followed bnc's information without much words and left the (difficult?) planting task to his stealthier comrades, should it be necessary.

The young mage seemed to be glad about the time to mind his own thoughts.
It had been quite a whilee since he had lost a spiritual follower. Loosing a bound spirit wasn't as personal as loosing an actual friend, of course, but there was something else to it: Each spirit bound to his side was a proof of God's trust in him, and he had discarded it. He had failed his lord.

Apart from that, he seemed to be rather nervous and apparently quite worried about the drones probably having captured his face.

As they arrived at their destination, he inspected their surroundings astrally before leaving the van. It's calm... so calm. A shame to defile the peaceful aura of this place.
Anna's voice called his attention back to the physical world. "Uh, right. I have to touch him, that's a bummer. So let's restrain him first... Any of you got duct tape?", and he searched the van for something to restrain Assault.

Sharkboy communicated over subvocals as he made his way back to the Van,"Sorry, I don't usually carry handcuffs unless I need them for a gimmick. Best I can offer is that Nova and I manually restrain him, or we break his arms or a leg or something to make it harder for him to escape. Would the pain would interfere with your mind-reading?" If anyone could see him, the mask made it hard to tell how serious he was about that last suggestion.

"We should at least strip the guy of his equipment and check for any chips or microphones embedded in him before we wake him up."

"...And plant a bug of our own, to see where he goes, and who he reports too after the investigation. Can we do that?" She adds "I can make Wraith indivisible for the spell... as " she looks at Wraith "No offense, but I trust that Nova or the Shark can handle a punch better than you."

"Good ride, Wraith. Guess I don't need to remind you that a weapon focus is dual-natured and thus a spirit can Conceal it and himself without even manifesting, right?"
bnc was right: She didn't need to remind him. But did it anyway.

bnc didn't allow herself too much to think. Too much thinking always lead to too much feeling, a thing for which there's neither time nor space. Once they're out of Linz, bnc Jumps into the van and drives recklessly - not because she's in a hurry but because she needs to blow off some steam. It takes her less than twenty minutes to park the car in a woody spot somewhere in the middle of nowhere, before she unhooks and enters her meat body with a groan.
"UUuugh, dumb thing. Need to oil the hinges..."
She kicks the door open and stretches, scanning the area she picked, then nods in silent appreciation to herself while still shaking life back into her limbs. It's only then that she realizes. "Frag, darn! Is anyone of you wounded? 'cept for that chinky can over there, of course?"

With an almost careless wave, she sends out her other two Noizquitos - excluding the one still on the street to Leonfelden - to cover the area from the air. She pauses a moment to follow the Noizquitos with her own eyes, seeing the clouds and the sky with her own eyes for the first time in quite a while - well, almost own eyes. She bites her lips lost in thought as she once more asks herself whether the had taken one step too far - only to realize the futility to reflect enhancements with a brain that is in itself far from natural. She turns back to the group.

"Why is it that everyone needs me to do all the preparations but no one listens when I, once in a while...", she mutters to herself without even finishing the sentences.
"James, get the plasteel restraints from my bag and hand them over to Sharkboy." She marks Shark with an ARO as James doesn't know yet who is who. The machine silently sets into motion, opens the trunk and takes a pair of restraints from the very spot it itself stuffed it. "Also bring a stealth tag, while you're at it.", she adds, while she herself picks up her medkit.
"Anny, stuff that chip where the sun don't shine. I guess you have the most experience in where a man feels a touch and where not."
She runs a hand through her hair and opens the lid of her medkit.