The girl nods, a soft cracked smile coming onto her lips. You manage to bandage her up in not too much time, removing the bullet fragments and oher foreign material from her wounds.

Fireteam A
The Ork gets pulverised in the skull, bits of her head go flying off in a spectacular spray of blood and gore. She almost flies backwards with the force of the blow, the radio dropping out of her hands. The blood and bits of her brains and skull splattered against the hostages, some of whom faint.

The troll's eyes glaze over and he stumbles backwards a bit, smoke trailing out of his massive form in little wisps. His body chars, and he collapses backwards with a resounding crash.

Kadel nods at Roland. "Good shit, man. Way to go."

He walks over to the Predator that Roland had kicked away and picks it up. Depressing the release with a soft *click*, he ejects the magazine and pockets it. Returning to where the girl is sitting, he kneels down and places the gun on the floor next to her as a gesture of goodwill.

"Alright miss, who are you and what are you doing here?"

She seems reluctant to speak, but stares at her deceased boyfriend, then down at her bandaged wounds and finally looks back up to you.

"I guess I do owe you." She finally croaks, her voice parched and dry, her throat also coated in now-dried blood.

"I'm a shadowrunner hired by Wuxing. The bastards..." She coughs violently. "Said this would be a milk run. Me and hubb were left fo dead here when we came into a fight with ... someone... here. They musta been corpers, you know? Most of us weren't much of a match."

"Corpers? How many? Can you describe them?"

Roland looks at her sympathetically and in his most comforting voice, he says, 'There, there, yeah, that's the story of us runners, always getting screwed by the Johnsons. And as my friend as just said, if you can give us a description of these corpers and what they're packing, I think we'll probably have to fight them too. We're basically the good guys.'

"An' ask 'er wha' Wuxing hired 'er for," whispers the troll through his comm, still standing invisibly off to the side.

"The good guys, huh? Yeah, that's what I always try to tell myself when I can't sleep." She coughs again. "Okay...hubb and I, well, the entire team, we came across the pack 'o huge fragging rats in the sewers, all cut and diced up. And a few were still alive and came gunning for us, so we opened fire, but that ain't the point- After that, a group of these really heavily armoured guys came up from behind us and shot us to hell."

"What they used...uh, really big and thick armour... and there was this guy with two SMGs in his hand and a metal tail flying all over the place, and this huge troll with two friggin gatling guns, and this whole army of spirits and elementals and shit. I brought up a smokescreen and a few of us made it out the lift hatch...which itself was trapped. Hubb caught a claymore right in his gut." She gently strokes the body. "Even my magic couldn't save him." She sniffs.

"Then I dragged him here, and prayed and prayed and prayed thrice over. They found us, not much else way to go, and they shot me good, right in point blank, then...I don't know, they left me here. Probably thought I'd wither away slowly...bastards. I guess they were right...until you showed up."

"And that's the story of the end of my life. I don't know if I can live to see another day after this." She looks down towards the ground. "But if anything I say can help you go after 'em..."

Kadel's eyes seem to stare into the distance for a second before refocusing. He looks at the girl. "You said that you thought this would be a milk run. What did Wuxing hire you for?"

"I...well, come to think of it, it was an 'extraction'; that's what hubb told me. But he had been avoiding me before we ran...it must have been something else. It must have. I never got the chance to...*sniff* chance to ask him."

Kadel raises an eyebrow. "Do you know what this place is?"

"Well yeah, this is the Ritz, but Hubb said the johnson said it didn't have any defenses up, so we'd have an easy time. Yeah, an easy time losing our lives..." Her voice trails off.

No defenses up? Is it possible that this woman arrived before the terrorists did? Can't be...they've had the building secured for well over eight hours.

"When did you guys get here?"

His eyes flicker to the bloody footsteps leading ominously to the closed door. "And what happened to the rest of your team?"

"We came...I don't know, this morning...sometime this morning...I've been here for...how long? What time is it? And...two of them ran out that door..." She points towards the door in the room. "Angelica and Swiss ran out on me...but I don't really blame them. We were all bleeding pretty heavy and panicking out."

With the mention of the two survivors fleeing through the door, Reaper rests his body against the wall. Extending himself, he once again projects and peeks his head through the wall to peer beyond what the door conceals.

OOC: I'm assuming that the ward is only on the door itself and not on the wall.

As Reaper enters the Astral and passes through the wall, he notices that the walls and door seem to be insulated and sound-proofed. The next room is a semi-storage area, with the same crates that you and your team saw before. This room, unlike the others, are well-lit. An open cargo lift is at the other end of the room, but is currently blocked by some red barrels and crates. Some of the crates are open: soft foam insides, though some have straw, and AK-97 assault rifles, mountains of ammunition, grenades and a few loaded rocket launchers lie either resting in the crates or propped up against the wall. Most of them look of extremely shoddy craftsmanship, servicable, but just barely.

More interesting, two dwarfs are inside the room. Both sport long, white beards and a very distinct American-Chinese look. Both are clad in long (well, short) coats and jeans with grey city camourflage shirts. One of the dwarfs is sitting on a crate reading a porno mag and stroking the AK-97 on his lap in a rather strange fashion.

The other dwarf is standing over what looks to be a female elf prisoner on the floor, bound and bleeding all over clad in tattered gray camo clothing. He continuously barks something at her in chinese and then follows it with a flurry of blows from his own AK-97.

The bloodstains in the room all lead to the elevator. The room also has three air vent entrances, which from one a small watche spirit suddenly appears from and floats through the air to another, whistling to itself.

"Give up, pa." The dwarf with the porno mag comments in a thick british accent. "She's already told us all she knows."

The other dwarf stops and his accent also switches to a thick british one.
"She's holding back on us, I know she is, and I don't trust that magic of yours one lick, boy!"
"Pa, I only blew up the house once!"
"It was mah favourite house too! Now shut up, ye wanker, and come help me wrangle more out of this bitch!"
"Maybe if you stopped hitting her..."
"Bah, what do you know." *SMACK*

- - - - -

Fireteam A

Like most combats in your lives this one went rather quickly, even moreso with the mysterious help you received. Your loud, unsupressed gunshots echo through the theatre long after the last shots were fired.

But hey, the whole building has erupted into violence. A little loud shooting now wouldn't cause any trouble...right?

Kadel closes his eyes and runs what the girl told him through his head, organizing his thoughts.

Arrived this morning. We met the general in the afternoon. Her team was attacked by guys backed by an army of spirits. An army of spirits assaulted the rooftop-bound aircraft that was carrying Team A. Her assailants might not be corpers, but terrorists.

If she arrived before they did, who trapped the elevator hatch?

Whoever sliced up those rats. Two different groups possible?

An extraction run...the night one kid?

Military-grade armor possible. Must take care with my shots.

Two still alive. Heavily wounded, so they should be easy to identify.

He opens his eyes again. Turning to the girl, he asks, "What are you going to do now? One of my friends rigged up that lift with a trap, but I can ask him to see if he can disassemble it. You'll be able to go back through the sewers. However, the exit to the above is no doubt crawling with Lonestar by now, so it's your call."

"I don't want to go into the sewers again!" She shivers at the thought. "I...really don't want to...I have some friends in the force. Lone Star officers. I think they can help me. I hope...but I don't want to go down there again, never."

"Maybe...I dunno, if you guys go through I think I'll be able to follow and keep out of sight, just long enough to get out of the building."

Kadel gazes at the girl with a strange expression on his face. He seems to be weighing the options available - a calculating look dances in his eyes. After a moment, he snaps out of it, and nods at her.

"If my teammates don't have any problem with it, you're free to follow along. We can drop you off on the ground floor after we neutralize the terrorists, and you can make your way out the front entrance."

He smiles faintly. "Yeah, terrorists. They've got the whole building under lockdown, so don't go wandering off."

Are these guys terrorists though? Terrorists make demands that can be met...something like this is just begging for the government to call a CT team to take them down. Terrorists use hostages as their trump card...they don't turn their foxhole into a fuckin' fortress.

He takes the Predator magazine out of his pocket and tosses it to the girl. "You might need to defend yourself. I trust you won't do something stupid like try to shoot us in the back."

"As this gentleman as said, we're trying to stop them, so this time around we really are the good guys. I guess it's okay for you to come along until you can slip out of this building."

Roland turns his head to the rest of the team. "Okay, once we have this all squared away I think we have few other options other than this door over here. Does anyone know what's behind Door number one?"

People in military grade armor.... Not good.... I think I packed some AV ammo.... Oh yeah, better distribute out my flashbangs for the team....

Axe mumbles to himself as he brings forth his spirits and sets them to guarding the entrances to the area and brings his spell back up. "Fraggin' terrorists," he mutters to himself. He then remembers the hostages in the room, "You lot, know anything about what's goin' on? We'll try to get you out of here ASAP, but it might not do any good. You know anything about the bomb?"

The girl introduces herself casually as Sundancer, a sun shamaness. She nods and slides the half-empty magazine back into her Predator, then braces herself up against the wall. She looks down at her boyfriend for a moment, silently debating if she should leave him. Eventually though, she makes up her mind. She slowly kneels and plants a soft kiss on her deceased's forehead. Her sides hurt a bit, but she's ready to go.

Back with the other team, out of the four tied up hostages, two have fainted and are out cold. One is gibbering senselessly and the last one, a rather attractive woman in a wage slave outfit, shakes her head to your question. To them, they were caught by surprise in their office then beaten around until you showed up.

"Hey Reaper," Kadel says into his transceiver, "can you go take a look-see at that room behind the door?"

Silence. "Reaper? You there?"

He looks at the team and shrugs. "Out cold. He's already on it, I guess."

Making a quick note of the scene, Reaper re-enters into his meatbod. "Next room looks like sum sorta storage - buncha crates filled wit' Ay-kay's an' rockets - I'd watch yer explosives. Two dwarves inside, onez uh mage; otha onez gotta Ay-kay an'z beatin' uh girl-elf. Far end gots an open cargo lift, maybe sum o' der chummers back dere. Der wuz also uh watcha spirit floatin' round. An' tha doors warded."

"When we go in, I'll cover Astral; make sure none o' dem spirits got any friends hanging around."

"Oh, an' duz Sundancer got uh comm number fer her buddies?"

Sundancer sheds the masking on her aura for just a second, then astrally perceives. She takes a step backwards when she realized how close she was to Reaper, and a troll with a halberd is rather intimidating. Sundancer manages to recompose herself slightly and stops perceiving, then activates her masking again.

"My radio was shot back there." She holds up a headset that's been shattered in half by bullet trauma. She sets the piece of junk down on a crate behind her. "I tried, but it's totally gone. It doesn't work."

Dwarves? I thought this was a metahuman hate group....

Kadel frowns, but remains silent.

Roland stands up and collects his gear.

"Ok, so next room is filled with explosive materials, two hostile dwarves, probable terrorists, and a hostage who is in close proximity with at least one of them. We can't use any of the major explosives, I guess we better do a standard room entry. Let's see, I'll take a look at the door and then we can determine how to proceed. Looks like entry team is Kadel, Downtown and me. Kadel you run in, go left, Downtown follow right behind Kadel and go right and I'll shoot from the door.

First priority is the mage, once he is eliminated take out the other dwarf. We move on a three count, at one I grab the door and unlock it, two I throw open the door while moving myself out of the way, and immediately you move which is basically three, after which I'll move back into the doorway with my shield. At two, Reaper head in there and do you astral mojo thing. Theodor, watch our six. Sundancer.... stay there. That sounds good everybody? That could be our SOP for warded rooms that we can't clear with grenades."

Kadel shakes his head. "Good entry plan, but don't kill them yet. I'm going to try to get them to talk. See if they know anything useful."

"...Hmm. Am havink idea."

A cartoonish lightbulb appears on Theodor's head, as her reaches into the deep pockets of his lab coat and pulls out a strange looking widget and a miniature microphone. He hooks the widget to the microphone, and stuffs the microphone into the keyhole of the soundproof door.

"...if zis ultrasvound recieve dewice can 'see' zem ve can hit zem viff somezing vithout goink in."

Theodor manages to fit the extremely slim shotgun mic into the keyhole of the door frame, which retains a traditional tumbler lock. The door seems to be locked but eventually with enough stabbing and dogged persistance, the mike slides into a position where he picks up some faint audio, which is pretty good considering the door is 'soundproof'.

*SMACK* *SMACK* *SMACK*
"For the love of...pa! Stop that!"
"I can't help it, boy! *SMACK* They wanted to execute us! I ain't letting that slide!"

The bound girl groans loudly in pain, and gets smacked one final time.

"Look pa, we're trapped in a hostile building with terrorists and laying low. Beating her to death won't bring back anybody."
"Yeah, well, okay boy. Okay. Got any spare porno with you?"
"I'll send my watcher to find some. The bunks down the pipes seem to have quite a lot."

The passive ultrasound in the room is much too weak to form a clear picture, unfortunately.

"....Hmm. Unablink to get ze klear picture, but zeems zey are not viff tevvorists....and vat is zis 'vatcher'..?"

"There is a definite mage. Fine, we go in hard and fast but just yell at them to not shoot. Is that okay then? But if they do anything then we hit them and we hit them hard because we just entered the building and I do not want any of us getting hurt at this point over this minor encounter. We can question them if they survive, if you really care, aim for nonvital spots."

"Terrorists or not, they're beating a helpless girl who can't fight back. We need to go through there anyway, so it doesn't look like we have much of a choice."

Kadel catches Roland's eyes. "Give the signal, fearless leader, and I'm going in."

"Ok, Theodor, is that door locked? Can you pick it?"

Great, this mission is now so muddled it.... this is a comedy of errors. Runners and terrorists and corpers all mixing it up.... Could make a great screenplay for a made for trid movie.... hmmm.... nah, too convoluted, no one will believe it. Oh hmmm.... Wuxing is involved, likely Ares, who's next Aztechnology? Wuxing and Aztechs and Ares, Oh my!

Roland waits for Theodor's response. If the door can not be unlocked, he'll have to use his other door 'knocker', the mossberg....

Terry looks at the runner team, his weapon smoking ih his hads. If their enemies, then he's outgunned anyway, so he lowers it and holsters the Morissey Alta. He approaches the hostages, but keeps a wary eye on the team, squatting down to one of the concious ones.

"Hey, you survived. Everything is calm now. The big, scary bad guys are all gone." He avoids using the word "dead...that was a big no-no, a trigger for terror and despair among the traumatized. He made sure they could all se his empty hands and spoke with a smooth, calm voice.

"What I would like is for you to wipe your eyes, okay?" He hands a handkerchief to the victim, letting a soft, benevolent smile stretch his lips a litte bit. "There, now, see? Everything is allright. You're all safe. Now, do you think you can explain to me what happenned to you, in the order that it happenned? Please, try your best, allright?"

What the hell is this!?

Kyle points the AR toward the ground but keeps it ready. He adresses the new comer. "Sir, place your weapon on the ground and identify your self."

"Axe, can you get us an Astral recon of the surrounding rooms?"

The lady thinks carefully, rubbing her wrist absently after being freed from her bonds.

"Well, it started this morning...around six o'clock. Normal day in the shop for me, then I heard screams, and this large group of people in camoflage clothing stormed through the shopping arcade and held me at gunpoint, along with my colleagues here. Then we were blindfolded and brought here, where that crazed man beat us with his gun for hours and hours, screaming at us for some reason."

Upon closer inspection, you notice that the lady has some distinguishing marks of an elf, particularly the sharpened ears. In fact, only one of the hostages looks a human.

"Thanks for helping us. Thank you very much, but I'm sorry I can't help."

As the troll falls to the ground from Burn's spell, Slash speaks into his radio again. "All units, be advised, some of these tangoes are metahuman. Repeat, some metahuman hostiles found. Alpha one out."

Turning to Terry, he asks "So who are you? A hostage who fought back?"

Terry looked over at Kyle with a frown. Well, he hadn't been shot yet.

"I believe the procedure is that you relieve me of my weapon personally...you're not military personell, are you?" He calmly took his pistol out of it's holster and set it on the ground, then looked at him square in the eye. He was obviously native...pureblood native! "I'm Terry Michaels and I have a permit for my weapon to both posess and carry. I'm also a counsellor from the Sioux. I happenned to have the misfortune of being on vacation and doubled it up by deciding to take it in the UCAS. I was in the building when everything hit the fan and have been trying to stay unseen and find a way out since. There. I've been square with you, your turn to return the favour."

Kadel shrugs. "I'm pretty sure Downtown and I can disable their weapons before they try anything. From the sound of it, it seems like they're the type of people who greet 'friends' with automatic gunfire."

Roland sighs at the ethical debates swirling around the team. So very little time for us to get acclimated to really function as a unit. We'll probably get nailed later on for it...

Roland quitely whispers out, "Listen, we decide now, because we're on a pretty schedule especially since we have who knows how many stairs to climb up to the top. This is just merely delaying I don't know if the SEAL team or the other group made it to the objective and but we have to act like they haven't. We have been told that there are other outside teams going on and if they are hostile to us we will have to act accordingly, so hurry up and decide. But the way they treat a captive is indicative to me of how much value I'll put into their lives. Times a wasting."

"Fair enough," Slash replies. "These terrorists have a nuke, and we are here to disarm it and rescue the hostages. We are independent contractors hired to augment the military commandos spearheading this operation. My name is Slash, and I'm the leader of the hired team. We are tasked with securing hostages while the military goes for the bomb."

Slash looks around at the hostages, counting them and making sure none are seriously injured. "So, what exactly do you do for a living, that you can move so fast?" Slash assenses the newcomer.

"Yer team lead Roland - make tha call, I wuz jus offerin' options."

Kyle snickers at Terry's comments. "Don't you watch the trid? That's the cop always gets it: he calmly walks up to the perp and as he reaches for the weapon, he gets the last surprise of his life."

After Slash briefs the unknown stranger: "Well, now that you been given clearence," Kyle shoots a sideways glace at the team leader, "I guess you understand the severity of your situation."

He pauses to let the gravity of the statements sink in.

"Slash, I don't know what you plan on doing with the hostages, but we need to move out. This posistion could be compromised." Kyle turns back to Terry, "Don't suppose you know a good spot for us to leave these folks for a while?"

BlackSpec responds to Slash's radio call.

"Affirmative. Already came into contact with some."

An RPG whizzes by the Blackspec member's head, filling the immediate area with the sounds of its' distinct trail and following explosion. The Blackspec member sounds rather unfazed.

"Active jamming and/or disturbance detected further ahead. May not be able to keep in contact."

Kadel gives Roland a quizzical look. "Didn't you already whip up an entry plan? What else is there to decide?"

"We're going to need to get through that door no matter what. It doesn't really matter whether you have the professor pick the lock, blow it open with your shotgun, let Reaper convince the dwarves to let us in, or just knock like a gentlemen and ask politely for permission to enter. Different means, same end...the call, as Reaper said, is yours to make."

"Let's jet. I don't fancy hangin' out here when those grunts show up to find out what happened to their boys. Did the one with the radio get anything out?" Axe says, talking while he summons his spirits.

"I say we get the drek out of here as fast as possible and find that bomb. I don't like this whole countdown to fallout situation."

Meanwhile, Theodor cuts the sound feed into his ultrasound device (so as not to get intense audio feedback whilst doing the job), then jiggles the microphone about the lock. After a few minutes, a barely audible 'click' is heard. (Unlocked!)

"...Zere. Is not needink to vaste ammo on door."