As boo jacks in through the dataline tap, he appears on the first floor of an iconisized shopping mall. Flashing lights abound, as digital sales people try to hawk you wares. You ignore them on your search for some sort of security. you find references "21-floor" and eventually find it and log on to the host, going from the chaotic mall, to a pristine, secure facility. You quickly find the 20th and 21st floor camera feeds, both floors have a small selection of cameras, and each floor has a camera covering all of elevator doors, and one aimed at the secretary's desk, among others. The 21'st floor, due appearently to it's sprawling nature has sgnificantly more feeds than the 20th does.

Boo gets a good look at the 21st floor through the cameras. 'Damn! There are a hell of a lot of cameras there, but the only seem to look at the elevators and reception desk. No way to see what's going on in the lab rooms. Oh well, at least I'll be able to tell Wormwood when the coast is clear.'

He pauses for a moment to figure out his next move. 'Hmm...let's see if I can get a look at the 22-24 floors. Oh yeah, and the roof. Let's see then I'll need to see if I can get access to the elevators for Wormwood's ascent. Once, I'm finished with that I'll log out for a while to limit the chance of being noticed. Hopefully, the security tally will be back down to zero when it comes time to go back in.'

Deciding that's everything he needs to do for know, Boo gets back to decking his way through the isolated system.

As the evening approaches, wormwood remains safe in the little office, with no further near interuptions, and boo eventually gets back onto the trix to snoop around some more.

At 7 pm, throngs of people again flood out the front door, and everyone on the 21st floor move past the camera's as boo observes, but not towards the main elevator that is near the receptionist, instead moving to the back of the floor to get on another elevator, which, based on the numbers above it, only goes higher. By 730, it would seem that everyone was off of the floor. Boo quickly searches for cameras on the higher floors, but is unscuccessful.

Boo records 10 minutes of footage from the video cameras on the 20th and 21st floors. He then sets up a command to loop that playback for the guards. He also accesses the elevator that goes up to the 21st floor, then sets up a command that prevents it from alerting security of its movement.

That done, he radios Wormwood to tell him the coast is clear.

Wormwood gets up and stretches for a minute when he gets Boo's message. "Ok show time."

Not wanting to leave his dataline tap, Wormwood quickly disconnects it and quietly unlocks the door.

He is still nervous about this run. Somehow it just seems far too easy so far, but there is nothing he can do about it now.

He silently opens the door. Despite Boo's assurance that its clear, he can't help but scan in both directions. He then heads for the elevator and takes it up to the 21st floor.

As the doors open onto the 21st floor, he is hiding just inside and only takes a quick peek out. Seeing nobody around, he moves out in a crouch. He quickly moves across this floor to where the floorplans showed the elevator for the upper floors.

The feeling of foreboding just grows stronger as Wormwood makes it to the other elevator without encountering any difficulty at all.

As a precaution, he quickly puts out the lights near the elevator so that he will be in shadow when it opens up. Then he presses the button to have it come down.

When it arrives, he is hiding in the shadows so he can avoid any camera that might be in the elevator.

and the elevator arrives, you stick to the wall as much as you can, standing underneath what appears to be a rather directional camera. and you ascend to the 25th floor, step off the elevator, and into a door way with a sign "too roof", and so you go through it, and begin climbing upstairs. You exit the door, greeted by (relatively) fresh air, and a glowing red light over your head...

Wormwoodknocks out the light with his shock gloves, because he doesn't like the color red. That, and he wants to have as little light as is necessary.

He then proceeds to find something to tie the grapple line to, making sure it will hold plenty of weight.

That accomplished, he radios the group. "Roof is secured. Sending the line down now. Be sure to bring up my gun and climbing harness for the descent."

Mason hefts his climbing gear and approaches the building, trying his best to remain out of sight. Grabbing a line, he quickly rigs the ascent harness, hooked to his rig by an extra carabiner, he secures a bag with Wormwood's weapon and an extra kit. Double checking his work, Mason proceeds to head up the building, taking care to avoid any windows he can, especially those with lights.

Mason quickly and effectively reaches the side of the building, where he finds the rope dangling, infront of him. He reaches up slightly trying to pull himself up the rope, and begins the ascent, getting about 3 meters off the ground when suddenly a gust of wind catches you and knocks you againist the building, causing you to release the rope, and then you somehow manage to slide right back down to the ground every time, despite the harness. You land awkwardly but on your feet as Wormwood looks on from above. With a few curses you check over your harness, and realize you rigged it backwards...

Taking a few extra moments you redo it making sure it's right this time...

Seeing Mason's difficulties, Boo barks out a laugh. Then he remembers that they're trying to be stealthy. He quickly looks around to see if anybody noticed him.

Still amused, but once again focused on the run, Boo attempts to move stealthily over to the building.

Once there, he whispers to Mason (at least its a whisper for him, it sounds more like a low rumble), "You need some 'elp with dat, little man?"

As he looks at Mason's harness and then his own troll sized harness, he suddenly realizes that he has no freaking clue how the hell it is supposed to work. Come to think of it, he has never been the athletic type.

Embarrassed by his lack of knowledge, Boo quickly stops hassling Mason. He pretends to be double-checking Mason's ascent harness for him after the first failed attempt. What he is actually doing is trying to figure out how it goes so he can put his own on correctly.

He does the same when Hooter comes over to climb the rope. By the time Hooter starts his ascent, Boo thinks he's got it figured out.

As the other group members are climbing their way up, Boo takes his time to put the harnass on correctly. He cautiously begins his ascent.

Mason finally figures out how the harness is supposed to work and begins his ascent. After a beautiful climb, he reaches the top and hands Wormwood the bag with his SMG, trying to explain away the snafu. "One of the carabiners was bad, sorry it took so long for me to get up."

Wormwood is a little bit confused at first. He didn't realize Mason even had any difficulties. It's not like he could see what was going on down there in the dark.

Then he remembers the rope moving around quite a bit shortly after he let the line down. "Oh was that why the rope was flailing around so much? I just figured there was some confusion about who would go first."

"Hopefully, it's not much longer before Hooter and Boo get up here. I am not comfortable setting out here in the open. I can't shake the feeling that this has been far too easy thus far. There is no way the whole run is going to be like this."

Boo begins his climb behind mason, making his trip up in 36 minutes, and as he reaches the top, everyone looks over the side, to help Hooter, and see's he's only about half way up the building, clutching on for dear life, and moving rather slowly, Finally, nearly another half hour has passed, but the whole team is finally up on the roof.

"Ok, now that we're all here, let's head on in. There 21st floor was completely empty." Wormwood explains. "They would have to have more security than that to protect the prototype. So, I am thinking we should check the other floors first."

"What do you guys think?" he asks everybody.

Mason replies: "Did you get to do any looking around after everybody left? Boo, did you see anything on the cameras on those floors? Were there more cameras?"

Boo replies "I couldn't find any cameras for the levels above 21. That either means they don't exist or they are on a different isolated host."

"As far as the cameras on the 21st floor go, they only looked on the elevators and reception desk. There were none in any of the rooms."

Wormwood scoffs at Mason's idea that he may have looked around on his own in there. "Hey, I wasn't about to go looking around without you guys to back me up. All I did was hide in a recently emptied office during the day, and sneak my way straight here after everybody left."

"Wait for me guys..."

And so everyone goes towards the stairs, following wormwood (since he knows where he's going) down to the 24'th floor...

(perception checks please)

Everyone gets on the elevator on the 24th floor, and heads down to the 21'st floor, where wormwood was hiding...

Hooter and Wormwood and Boo

Not knowing if the others had heard the voices, Wormwood gestures for the others to stay back and keep quite. He further points to his ears and then in the direction of the sound to indicate he is hearing something in that direction.

When he sees understanding in the others' faces, he sticks his head out looking in the direction of the conversation he was hearing.

Realizing that the voices are actually coming from around the corner. With his pistol at the ready, Wormwood crosses the open area in front of the elevator to the hallway dead ahead, keeping close watch on the side hallway that the voices are coming from.

He halts as soon as he gets to the hallway and puts the corner of the wall between himself and the direction of the voices.

He takes a moment to glance down the hallway he is crouched in along with the other side hallway, before gesturing for the others to follow suit.

Mason follows suit, hoping not to botch up.

Everyone crosses towards the hallway directly across the elevator, the voices getting more muffled, moving away from you.. The hallway across from the elevator features a variety of potted plants and trees between inset door ways that are set every 5-6 meters...


(inset door way looks something like:

Wormwood cringes a little bit as the bulky troll crosses the lobby area, but is pleasantly surprised by how quietly Boo is able to cross the open area.

As everybody crosses the open area, Wormwood realizes that the voices are getting further away. 'Good, we don't want a confrontation this early in the infiltration,' he thinks to himself.

Seening an office doorway not far from where the group is hiding, he thinks 'That will be a good place to discuss the new situation.' He then turns to the others and silently gestures for them to follow him while he heads towards it.

and so every approaches one of the offices, to find the door locked...

Seeing that the door is locked, Wormwood holsters his pistol and breaks out his tools.
He whispers to the rest of the group "I'll have this open in just a moment, keep watch for the guards."

Then he quickly gets to work on the locking mechanism.

Hooter watches the hall, his magic stick at the ready.

Mason stops Wormwood as he is holstering his pistol, slight embarassment evident in his voice. "Hey, mind if I borrow that while you work...I forgot mine."

Wormwood pauses and looks down at his trusty pistol. He's practiced with it more than his smg so he is loathed to let it go.

He looks up into Mason's face and whispers, "Can you use my smg?"

Mason smiles : "Uh, sure..."

Wormwood finishes holstering his pistol.

As he pulls out his smg he tells Mason, "Eh...here you go. I think your spells should to the trick. If you need to use this we'll be in pretty dire straits. So just use it to spray the area with bullets to cover our retreat." He then hands his Ares Protector, without it's briefcase container, to Mason.

That handled, Wormwood returns to working on the maglock with his toolkit.

Hooter raps the polearm on the palm of his hand. "Thats why every shaman needs his magic stick."

"Spray and Pray, got it." Mason acknowledges. He turns to Hooter and his massive weapon. "So I take it size does matter?"

"Some will tell you 'no', but dey lyin."

Wormwood quickly finishes with the door, as a series of lights blinks red and yellow, and as the lock releases, they go green, and every slowly enters into the small office. There is only a small nightlight on as you enter into the room, with papers scattered around on the desk and in piles on chairs...

"Guess these guys never heard of the paperless office," says Wormwood as he looks around.

Stepping out of the way, he says"Time for you to do your thing Boo."

Boo walks over to the exec's chair, and sits down in the execs chair. As he yanks the plug from wall, he comments "hmm, comfy chair, Boo could get used to this..." and he pops the plug to his deck into the wall, going limp in his chair. after a brief moment, everyone hears "ok, i'm in"... and after a few more moments, you hear boo say "ok, i found the cameras again, the guards are coming around the corner... oh no, it looks like they're each checking doors, making sure they're locked i guess..."

Mason

Wormwod quickly stops browsing through the scattered papers and moves to lock the door. He also makes sure that the lights in the office are turned off.
"Everybody be quite and get ready to jump them if necessary. Try to take them out silently if at all possible."
He then moves to a defensivable position with the desk between him and the door; his pistol at the ready to shoot anybody that opens the door.

Sneaking to a corner near the door, where he can bop any sec guards with his magic stick, Hooter stumbles over a paperclip, but otherwise arrives there unobstructed.

The voices of two menare heard close to the room you are in, one on this side of the hall, one on the other, and wormwood quickly moves to lock the door, and hustles back across the floor, and before he even gets back around the corner, the door handle giggles, confirming from the outside, that is is indeed locked. As he flips the lightswitch to turn off any lights that might've been left on, one of the guards startedly comments "did you see that? i think the lights just turned off".

And the other one replies, "really? i ddint notice, i'm sure Mr. Yakimakshima is just putting in a late night.."

"But then why would he have locked his door? he never does.."

"ahh, hell, i donno, but i'm sure it's nothing, maybe the nightlight bulb blew"

"yea, maybe so.."

and suddenly, hooter tries to get into posistion but stumbles on the paper clip, using the wall to maintain his balance, but landing on it making a relatively small thud(for a ork) againist the wall.

"oh shit man, that couldn't have been Mr. Yakimakshima..."

"you think one of the dogs may've got locked in there?"

"i donno man... lemme ask Jim..."..."hey Kim, are all the pets accounted for? we just heard a noise from Mr. Yakimakshima's office in 2121.."..."Ok, we're going to check it out..."

just then, everyone heres boo go "shit!", and then he rips his jack out of the side of his head and kneels down behind the desk. oppisite wormwood, the chair, still spinning.

A slightly audible click can be heard as the guard passes his magkey through the maglock, the door is opened partway, as one of the guards shines a light into the room calling out, "Mr. Yakimakshima, are you in here?", as he watches the chair spinning...

Hooter waits behind the door, hinding from the guards view. This time sure not to make a noise, he doesn't even tap his magic stick against his palm, as he so often does. He stands still, pole arm in hand, waiting to strike a guard on the head in case one enters.

Mason clenches his teeth getting ready for the drain of a manabolt if the guard should come in and find them. He'd much rather take a nasty headache than have everyone in the building hear Hooter hit a homerun on the guy's head when he comes in.

Wormwood starts a bit at Boo's interjection. 'What the hell could be happening with him? Things are not going well for us.' he thinks to himself.
He glances over at Boo, but quickly turns back to the more pressing matter of the guards coming in the door when he sees the big troll is at least conscious still.
He readies his pistol to take out the guards as soon as the come in. 'Good think this baby doesn't make much noise. But even if we can take these guys out without a sound, how are we going to deal with whoever they just talked to on the radio?' He shakes his head trying to get such thoughts out, at least for now. After all, those thoughts can only distract him from the coming fight.

Wormwood pops off two quick shots at the guard who is holding the door, both connecting with his shoulder, sending shards of metal into him, and providing a nicely tenderized human shoulder for some canibals consumption. as the guard staggers backwards from the blow, he rips a small rectangular package from his jacket,, drops it at the middle of the hall way and sets it off as he turns the corner making a very not tactical retreat. As the second security guard sees the condition of his partner, you hear a quiet "oh dear god.." and a soft, wet, squishy sound, and then the patter of footsteps running the oppisite direction.

Boo then pops his head up from behind the desk, but decides it best to stay here, unaware of what the actualy threat is.

The door opens, but Hooter still waits. Silenced gunfire goes off from the other side of him, but he still stands by the door waiting. Not realizing the guards have already opened the door, got shot, droped a bright shiny thing, and ran away, Hooter falls on his butt from the door popping him in the nose when they first entered. He gathers himself and stands again, in this office obstacle course.

Wormwood fires at the wounded guard as he heads for the corner, planting a shot into his lower back, with a grunt from the sec guard, he does, however, reamin upright, and alive.

Seeing the guards run in separate directions down the hallway, Wormwood vaults over the desk and dashes for the hallway. Briefly, he pauses at the doorway to spots the wounded guard through the disorienting light of the flashpak.

'First thing first,' he thinks to himself as he steps over to the flashpak and picks it up. 'Ha...let's see how they like it when I use their own toys against them.'

That done, he tries to down the wounded guard with yet another shot, hitting him squarely in the back. 'Damn, still not going down. This is taking too long...We're going to have more company soon.'

"I got 'em!"

A scowl grows across his face as he manupulates the mana around him, sending it from his mind to the mind of the fleeing sec guard.

"Good luck, fragger!" Hooter says under his breath.