As he sees the Knight Errant imposter move for his weapon, Kadel says to DT, "Looks like they've answered your question for you."

Immediately, he angles out of the doorway to the right towards the pillar. Simultaneously, he brings up his pistol, lining it dead center on the KE imposter's sternum and opening fire a split second before the other man pulls the trigger on his own weapon. With his other hand, he flicks the release hooking the first grenade to his grenade belt, palms it, and sends it sailing through the air towards the three terrorists bunched together behind the rubble.

As Kadel readies and throws his grenade, Theodor whips a frisbee-like object from under his lab coat, presses a few buttons, and sends it spinning where Kadel's grenade is going, banking off the far wall in the process.

Immediately after throwing, he runs and dives for cover at the table, immediately opposite the bandit in knight errant armor...

Downtown drops and rolls out of the doorway. His thumb flips the selector switch to full auto as he comes out of his roll. The weapon roars in his hand as he hoses down the first tango he see's.

Freed of the limitations of his own physical form, Reaper's astral form closes the distance between himself and the gathered city spirits at the speed of thought. Following closely behind him are his own small army of spirits. Even as they turn to face him, his glowing halbred sweeps down upon the closest pair.

"Son of a bitch!" Kadel curses as a line of bullets penetrates through the elastic material of his body armor and stitches up vertically from his chest to his shoulder. His left arm is snapped backwards from the force of the impact, and he takes half a step back to maintain his balance. His mind trances out the pain reflexively as dark red blood soaks through the black fabric of his armor.

His eyes sparkle enchantingly as he drops the Ruger and pulls out a sleek silver pistol with custom engravings etched on it from another holster.

This just got interesting.

Suddenly, an offensive grenade comes flying around the pillar. Moving with superhuman speed, Kadel dives out from his cover a split second before it detonates. An explosion propels him forward with even more force, the scorching flames searing a path down his back. Turning his dive into roll, he comes up on one knee with his gun right in front of the Knight Errant imposter's face.

"You are so fuckin' dead."

Burn searches the dead mage for foci, then moves to guard the door. "Guys, I'm invisible. Moving to guard the door." He makes sure not to stand directly in front of the door where he might inadvertently be shot.

Team A

Well, it doesn't look like the lift is operational from here. You suspect that because the lift doors are open and the inside looks like it was hit by a rocket launcher.

The stairs down are...gone. Yeah, the stairs lead down one level (it's only two levels for this stairway, it's a special one that connects to the theatre in case the lift is broken. The irony). It's about a sheer drop of six metres to a red carpeted floor. The floor is strewn with some debris - remnants of the stairs after something went very wrong here. You can see a body lying there when you look down. It's that T who ran from you earlier - He's lying bloodily implaed on a very large and sharp wooden spike, debris from the circular stairwell.

Reaper's magically enhanced halbred tears through the summoned spirits, reducing them back into the etheral strands of uncoalesced energy. His "momentum" carrying himself forward, he sweeps the polearm once again at another pair of the spirits.

Rookie.

The blast flattens the ork as he tries to roll out of the way. He slides a few feet south and west of his position. Luckily the grenade wasn't a frag.

Laying on his side he catches a glimps of a pink spray as Kade nails the KE imposter. Crawling around the corner of the desk he lifts his AR up and lets loose a pair of bursts at the AR and SMG'er

"Eat that," he hollers.

"Well, boys, this other team of yours, they have a separate mission? If we're goin' for the nuke, are they after the same target?"

He speaks casually, letting the prisoners (whom he's not talking to right now) know he's in control of himself and comfortable, even with his ignorance.

Team A

...begins to hear the sound of a chopper getting very, very close to the side of the building. Which is weird, because there don't seem to be windows on the sides of the theatre.

The sound eventually fades, heading downwards.

Panicking from her blurring vision because of the knockout gas, the female wielding the SMG shoots at the first person she sees: Theodor. However, her shots go wild off target and Theodor is able to deftly jump aside, none the worse for wear.

"Ach! Fraulein! Beink careful vere you pointink zat zing!"

As he ducks back into his cover, he reaches into his lab coat again, and pulls out another frisbee shaped object, this time with a red stripe across it's face. He once again pushes the buttons on it's face, then sends it spinning after the female as she disappears behind another wall, curving and backing it off the ceiling.

As the frisbee disappears around the corner, Theodor's eyes widen. "....uh, oops. Am suggestink ve hit deck."

Team B

For a very long time, the machine gunner's Ultimax roared, uncontrolled. Bullets and tracers whiz by in every direction for nearly a minute, before the gun finally dies down and is consumed by the fire, like the other three bodies that now lie in a huge bonfire of debris.

Sundancer very cautiously steps out of the doorway, looking right and left, wondering if the battle is over. The dwarf strides out and whistles in amazement.

The combat was over quicker than it had started, both in the dispersing of the opposing spirits as well as in the physical world courtesy of Theodor's grenade. Finishing an Astral sweep of the room, Reaper attempts to identify any other possible threats that still might remain.

"Hold on," says Brun, "let me scout that stairwell out astrally. If it's clear I can get us down." He projects into the astral plane and descends to the bottom of the wrecked stairwell.

Axe peers down on the scene from his perch before gathering up his spirits and making his way down to the floor. "Anyone wounded?"

When presented with the drop, he nods. "I can get us down if need be. Got a couple of easy ones."

Reaper returns to his physical form after the quick recon. "No one else livin' in here now."

As the last terrorist drops, Kadel switches to Team A's radio frequency, and says, "Bravo 2 again. We've extracted from one of the T's the location of the person in charge of this whole mess. According to him, he's on the 60th floor. That's 60 floors away from us, but only 20 from you, so I suggest that you guys head there first and we'll meet up with you when we can.

'Oh, and by the way, he also said that there are hostages on every floor, which confirms the numbers that Burn's vision gave us. It'll be a wasted effort if we try to free all of them, so I suggest making a beeline towards the eye of the storm and finding out what the hell is really going on."

Pulling out a medkit out of his rucksack, he strips off his shirt, tears a bandage off with his teeth, and starts wrapping it around the bleeding wound on his chest. The bullets barely missed his lung and made a clean exit out the back. After the wound is fully bandaged, he pulls his shirt back on, tosses the medkit to Roland and moves over to DT. Kneeling down, he presses two fingers on his neck where it meets the jaw.

"Still alive. I think Roland better do this one, 'cause he's seriously mangled up right now. I'll probably make it worse if I try anything."

It's late night in Seattle. The terror crisis has been going for a fair bit of time now. The light show about the Ritz didn't do much to quiten the people. It only made matters worse.

Lone Star was faltering. Runners are inherently opportunistic, and with their efforts concentrated on the Ritz and surrounding area, the city was quickly falling into a state of rampant chaos. Additional forces were called in, first Knight Errant and then the military guard, but things were just barely holding together.

In the international court, all eyes were on the UCAS governing body, with good reason. Their best counter terror units were already inside - by all accounts - and doing the best they could do. Now the President was doing his best to comfort the quickly panicing diplomats and emmisarries from other nations.

Back in Seattle, the skies around the city started to darken, and thunder and lightning streaked through the sky. It had not begun to rain yet, but soon it would. Soon it would.

Team A
You are confronted by an eerie sight when you make your way down the stairs. The power has been cut off in this level, and faint blue moonlight streaks in from the few windows on this floor. Lightning periodically illuminates the rooms.

You find hostages, some alive, some dead. None of them are your target. Just two floors down and you should meet up with Delta.

Team B
The first floor goes silent. All you can hear is the thunder from outside, and the debris settling in the carnage all about you. Suddenly the power is shot, and the room's ceiling lights cut off, plunging the foyer into darkness. Now you can hear more clearly the sounds outside - the screams of the confused, angry masses, the shrill sirens of Lone Star, the sharp rings of sniper rifles, exchanged gunfire and the launch of missiles.

The fake Knight had dropped to the floor, multiple baseball sized holes in his chest. He had been holding something in his hand, something that seemed to attract your attention, even in this mess. A weird sort of detonator - certainly looks like it - a complex series of brightly glowing screens and buttons, easily visible in the soft darkness.

The dwarf whistles low as the lights go out. "You guys sure overdid it, huh? Heh heh." Sundancer slowly sets her friend down against the frame of the door and half-limps over to Kadel as Roland does his best to work on Downtown.

"Hey guys, that looked like a rough one...I'm sorry I didn't help." She rubs her own bandages. "Here, I hope this can help."

She crouches by you and closes her eyes to concentrate, pushing past her physical pain, and casts a low force healing spell on you. The last of your wounds slowly begin to close up and vanish, leaving only a few bumps and bruises.

Kadel groans as the room goes black. "Aw, man. No freakin' way. You're telling me we have to hoof it up all the way to the 60th floor on foot?"

Terry's councillor training and helpfull nature war with his military training and experience. He wants to help the hostages, but he knows it's for nothing if the opponent is not stopped. His blindsight comes in handy in the darkened rooms as he moves along.

When Team A reaches the third floor down, they see many bodies sprawled across the floors, and it looked like someone tossed hundreds of bullets down these corridors. It seems that amongst the myriads of terrorist bodies is about half the Delta team, just as dead.

There is a gigantic hole in the wall where the copter crashed in...but the copter is missing...Yeah, there's a semi-crater there, but it's...gone.

"Watch our flanks guys," Slash says quietly. He actvates his radio. "Delta, come in, this is Alpha One, do you read?"

Team A

The radio is silent for a good long while. Shots and the sounds of battle are still heard in the distance as the persistent terrorists continue to exchange fire with the police forces below.

Outside, a single vehicle is left flying. Spirits gather about it and swarm en masse in bright throes, friend and foe alike. It's Delta's.

A sharp Gale is felt as the chopper ascends to face the huge crack in the wall. The vehicle looks immensely banged up and charred, but seems to be flying perfectly well. Over the great snaps of rotary blades, you catch a gleam of moonlight off the sharp grin of someone - something - sitting in the cockpit. The dazzling dance and lights of the spirits make it incredibly hard to see inside, even with vision modifcations.

The radio calls in with a voice you haven't heard before. It sounds like Delta's dwarf rigger, but his voice is distorted somehow. Horribly distorted. And not electronically.

"You called?"

Another gleam and another sharp grin from the figure within, and the front rotary miniguns whirr to life...

Axe gasps out "Drek!" as he dives for cover and tries to figure out what's going on.

The chopper's twin gatling saturate the air with deadly flying ammunition, adding to the hundreds of bullet holes already filling the floor. Clouds of massive dust and grit are kicked up as the bullets slowly chip away at your cover.

"...ztt...This is BlackSpec. Managed to cut though ECM, we see the objectiv...what in holy hell is going on over there?"

The Blackspec operator looks out one of the holes blown in the tower wall by a stray RPG and spots the incredible sight of the chopper raining bullets down on you, with the amazing spirit show.

"Sweet Jesus...Isn't that one of ours? Damnit, where's that AA..."

A barrage of rockets and missiles converge on the chopper both from Blackspec's location and the street below. Instantly the spirits scatter to and fro, blazing at terminal velocity around the top of the building in an even greater light show than before, taking all hits from the rockets and missiles from the street and blackspec. Their protective net is amazing, and you can't tell if any are destroyed. There's just so many of them, and they're so fast...

The spirits form a wide net around the chopper, preoccupied with the shower of missiles from below. The chopper meanwhile stops shooting, presumably for the miniguns to change belts.

Axe peers from cover and lets loose a massive ball of spiritual energy, drawing on his companion to help him resist the drain.

Slash dives behind cover, swearing profusely. Pulling out a high explosive grenade, he resets it to detonate on impact.

Terry hits cover, readying the sniper rifle he took from the bad guys. If there's any hesitation in that stream of minigun-fire, he's taking the shot! Hopefully he'll be able to punch through the armoured glass of the cockpit!

"Thanks Dance," DT coughs as he props himself up against the wall. He winces in pain with very breath.

"Damn stupid of me, but I though for sure I could get that guy."

Team A

Terry's rifle round tears right through the ballistic glass of the cockpit. Even at this range, you hear a sharp snap of flesh and bone tearing within. The bullet has left a tiny hole in the reinforced glass cockpit, but it is now entirely covered on the inside with a screen of blood. The spells slam and shear into the vehicle as it begins to descend out of sight...

...But you don't hear any crash.

Team B
Sundancer is very winded, spellcasting is extremely strainuous when you're injured. She tries to heal herself after healing DT.

"So, now that this here power's out, what're you going to do?" The dwarf asks. "It looks like you're going up by the looks of it."

"The elevator runs independant of the main power supplies."

Everyone turns around to see who said that. It wasn't Sundancer or the Dwarf, but her friend Swiss, who's now partially concious and able to prop herself up.

"I think I saw some floorplan notes. It's strange, because part of the building draws power from offsite along with some dedicated datalines. The lifts might still be in order."

Axe watches the craft descend. "Alright, let's get the frag outta that thing's line of fire if it decides to come back. Delta's apparently got some problems, and that looks like the work of a mage if I've ever seen it."

The steps down from that floor lead down into what looks like a nice restaurent. The entire atmosphere is very european. Food is still on plates on the various tables, now cold after the hours of exposure to the colder-than-usual air conditioning. The restaurent takes up the entire floor and is badly lit as the lights seem to be out. It has tinted stained glass windows everywhere - you can't see out nor can anyone or anything see in.

[perception results]
A few rats are scurrying around the floors - everyone catches this, which is very out of place for a restaurent like this.

There are a few hostages on this level, tied up and unconcious. A group of terrorists lie dead in a dark corner, riddled with bullets and hideous burns of some sort.

The next few floors down seem to be brightly lit. You can even make out the sound of a...conversation?

"First things first," Kadel looks at Swiss. "Considering that you've studied the floorplans of this place, do you think you can get your friend and the half-pint out of the building ASAP?"

Swiss rubs her bandaged forehead. "Some Ts left their map about somewhere on this level...I was taking a look, but I had to duck away before they discovered me. I don't know most of the building, but there was a marked entrance they made through a sewer wall in the basement. I think I know how to get out from there."

"Uh, why didn't you say anything when we were still down there?"

Kadel shakes his head. "Nevermind. Lead 'em out of here then. We're going to be going up, and I doubt you guys would want to follow any further."

He turns to the rest of the team. "Looks like the elevator is our only choice, unless you guys want to climb up 60 flights of stairs. Hey DT, you think you're in good enough shape to keep marching?"

Slash leads the team around the restaurant, swords in hand, searching for the next flight of stairs down.

Team B
Swiss and Dance both wave as they set off back towards the sewers. The dwarf thinks for a moment, then splits in a different direction.

"Hey wait, there's still a chance to nab some goods while there's no law watching us over..." He grins to himself. He does wave as he walks away into the shadows of the surrounding room, casting an invisibility spell on himself.

The elevator landing actually looks operational. The lights are on and working, no flicker. There's an electricity panel open on the floor, for maintenance work. Someone left their tools...must have been in a hurry. Bloodstains lead through the lift door.

Looking at the access maintenance panel, the display reads that the lift's power has been routed through a local Renraku leased Matrix and Power line, which seems to be a(n albeit strange) backbackup power source for the lift.

There's a blue LCD screen above the lift buttons. Archaic, but in a classy way - better than those damn trid buttons. It shows a bare bones user interface and several condition gauges for the lift. Apparently for the two lifts in the landing, both have their life support offline. Lift 1 is currently on the 60th floor, whilst lift 2 is on the 72nd floor.

Team A
Slash finds the stairs down to the first level of the restaurant. A few of the Ts gathered there are munching on high class cuisine, discussing tactics over some plans, and interrogating a few important looking hostages.

A strange dark skinned man with dreadlocks and in a business suit seems to be getting the most of their attention. He's commonly smacked by rifle butts and asked questions about the layout of the building, to which he doesn't reply, and gets smacked up more.

There are only 3 Ts in the room, 2 planning and one interrogating the hostages - five hostages bound, some gagged. The two that are planning seem to have a tense feel to their voices - as if they're barely keeping their calm.

You're currently hiding in an unlit portion of the restaurent - hidden in shadow. The stairs down are right next to you now as the layout has changed.

Burn pauses for a second to take in the situation, then flings a manabolt at the terrorist performing the interogation.

Axe blinks at Burn's fast, quite possibly hasty action, but doesn't have time to think it over as he throws a quick bind spell at one of the terrorists doing the planning.

Kadel flicks on the switch that brings the elevator harbored at the 72nd floor to life, presses the button that brings it down to the ground floor, and whistles to himself as he waits for its arrival.

The lift makes it's way down at an astounding speed, and opens to reveal a lavishly designed lift interior. Pity that it's been drenched with blood and bullet holes.

Halfway down, the other lift starts to move downwards as well.

Slightly alarmed at the self-calling elevator, Reaper sets himself down against another wall. "Heads up chums, I'm gonna take uh peek at whatz in tha otha el'vator, be right back."

Extending himself back into the Astral, Reaper flies upwards at the speed of thought to take a look at the other lift's contents.

The other elevator is filled with a trio of terrorists, with several more dead ones lying about on the lift floor. They've been wounded badly by gunfire and two are slumped against the limp's walls. They probably won't last five more minutes in that kind of condition.

They whisper and mumble in hushed, pained voices before they finally do die. In a variety of accents and languages they babble, mostly in a fearful stutter. You catch a variety of colourful words - 'Ghost', 'Devil', 'Lucifer', 'Demon', and so on.

As you watch the rapidly descending lift, you notice that only two of them are babbling. The third one, who looks considerably younger, is muttering something to himself in german. He sounds calmer, but still as tense. You catch a few English words thrown in, mainly 'this was a bad idea from the start'.

Reaper returns quickly to his meatbod - "Looks like we's got sum Tee's coming down in tha otha ele'vator. Two're wounded an dyin' - one's healthy an' talkin' ta himself. Think we can take 'em alive?"

Kadel nods. "Sure. Considering that they're coming down from the floor that their boss is supposedly hanging around in, they might know some stuff that these ground floor grunts don't."

Finally the elevator reaches ground floor, and sure enough, by then only one of them is left alive - the T who was muttering to himself in German. He stares wide eyed at the team outside, and his hand quickly moves for a pistol on the ground next to him. Instead of raising it at you, he tries to raise it to his right temple instead.

Kadels' eyes widen as he sees the man bring his gun up to his own head. He quickly draws his pistol and shoots the weapon out of the terrorist's hand before he could splatter his brains all over the elevator.

"Now why the hell would you want to do something stupid like that?" he asks calmly as he reholsters his weapon.

His pistol flies out of his hand with a trail of sparks. He looks at you as if you were going to finish him off with another shot, but is quite surprised by your words. He takes the time to get a proper look at the team, and realises they aren't who he originally though them to be.

"Mistook you for someone else..." He says in a voice heavily accented with modern German. "Heh. You don't like like SWAT. You don't look like the military... What are you doing in the eye of this storm?"