The mana invisablly forms around hooter, tendrils of power crawling across the astral space to the guard, sending his heart into paniced convulsion, which, among his other wounds, sends him falling to the floor.

Wormwood spins around and goes running towards the direction the other guard went running, and catches a glimps of him, firing off 2 bursts of shots, with lead flying, landing a hit right below his rib cage in the back.

Th guard spins around, pistol drawn, and fires off a pair of shots towards Wormwood, both of which fly over his shoulder, really presenting no harm.

Seeing the first guard going down after some gestures from Hooter, Wormwood quickly reverses direction and dashes down the hallway.

As he again passes the office door, he glances in to see Boo still trying to recover himself. ' Hope he's good enough to continue on. There's no way we will make it through this while trying to drag him along.'

Shaking his head to end such distracting thoughts, Wormwood refocuses his attention on the hallway just as he comes to the corner the second guard had gone around.

'There's the bastard,' he thinks to himself as he spots the guard dashing behind some cover for protection.

He lets out a quick shot that hits the guard in the guard, followed quickly by a second that buries itself in whatever it is the guard dashed behind. 'Shit, need a better position.'

His thoughts are interrupted by the guard returning fire. Wormwood starts a little at the sound of gunfire from the guard that had previously been running away.

After realizing that the shots had completely missed him and only done superficial damage to the wall behind him, Wormwood notices that there really isn't any place the guard can run to anymore. A smile forcing its way onto his lips, he thinks, 'The guard's mine now.'

Watching the guard duck around the corner, with Wormwood in quick pursuit, Mason has to fight the urge to get too caught up in the excitement. He could be leading us right into a trap. Mason turns around to look behind them, hearing the guard's pistol. Hopefully Wormwood didn't just buy it. Nothing sneaking up on us yet? Let's take a look in Hi-def.

Mason focuses briefly, allowing his mind's eye to perceive the astral space around them. You never know what these corps will throw at a runner. If they throw it on the astral, I'll be ready.

Giving chase to Wormwood and the fleeing guard, Hooter prepares another mana attack as he peers around the corner the two just went around.

Hooter gets a line to the guard, and begins to gather more mana around the guard, who, as the mana develops around him, clenches his jaw hard, as if trying to fight off the spell, and seems to manage to do so, as after a brief moment, his muscles relax again a bit. However, hooter quickly develops some pretty mean pain in his side as he clutches his ribs.

Seeing Hooter's efforts be ineffectual, Wormwood prepares to attack the guard again.

'Shit, this is not going well. This guy has probably already alerted the rest of the building to our presence and we still have no clue where the damn prototype is kept.'

Suddenly, Wormwood's eyes light up with an idea. As he closes to melee with the guard, he says "Leave this one to me," over his shoulder to Hooter.

When he reaches the guard, he leads the way with his gloved fists.

As Wormwood Charges at the guard he ducks under the first swing and counters with a quick, but ineffective jab to Wormwood's ribs, who answers with a 1-2 left jab followed by an uppercut to the jaw as jolts of electricity run through the guard's body.

Wormwood cringes for a moment as he strikes the guard's chin. Seeing the guard's face spasm as the electrical charge was transfered from the contact points atop knuckles, he thought he might just have gone too far with that hit.

Wormwood was pleasantly surprise to see the guard's eyes still open as the guard tried to recover from the blow. Though the glazed look in those eyes told him he probably wouldn't get much out of him in the next few seconds.

He knocks the weapon out of the guards limp hand (making sure to use his open palm to avoid shocking the guard into unconciousness).

He proceeds to grab the guard's lapels and starts to drag him back to the others. He tells the guard, "You're coming with me. Don't even waste my time by trying anything."

The guard is stuttering as Wormwood drills him. "Prototype? what the heeelll are you talking about man? i donno nothing, i'm just a freking beat guard around here. I just started a few weeks ago. They havent even gotten me a shirt with my name sewn into yet, see? He pulls at a clip on name tag "manuel" attached to his shirt, "as far as how many of us are here, i donno, really, Theres a couple of guys, up stairs, they look like they're asleep most of the time, and more teams of beat guards, thats all i know of. And yea, ofcourse they know about you already..."

'This is getting us nowhere.' Wormwood thinks to himself.

Then to the guard, he says "Do you really expect us to believe merde you just gave us?' forgetting for a moment that this guy probably doesn't speak French. "We've seen heavy guards doing security here. We know they can't all be as crappy as you. Hell, we've spotted them carrying freaking LMG's."

Annoyed, but knowing another hit could knock this guy out cold, he punches the wall just to the side of the guard's head. "Fine. Where are the labs? Surely you know that much?"

As the guard stutters to answer him, Wormwood has the strong suspicion that guard is just going to claim ignorance for that too. So he runs on to the next question without even waiting for a response. "How about areas you aren't allowed to go? I could see why they might keep somebody like you away from the important stuff."

"umm, well.." the guard stops for a moment, thinking "I've only got access into the office rooms, on this floor, I think the floor above us is just smaller labs, but on 23, theres a bug chunk of space i can't get into, maybe thats where you're trying to get it.. That's also where our staging area is, up on 23, but those other guys, they go into an area i can't get into..."

"Hmm....that sounds like where we need to go." Turning away from the guard for a moment, Wormwood looks at the others. "Any thing else you can think to ask about?"

As the conversation wraps up, boo stands back up. "nope, sounds like gud plan to me I dont think i can get to those floors from here though, I guess i'll go with you until we find a good room for me to hide out in."

"Want me to jog his memories more?"

As Bastard speaks those words, Wormwood has a flashback to a girl he once dated that was big into 20th century flatvids, and one particular flatvid they watched called the "Princess..." something or maybe something "..Bride". For an instant he just he could just see Hooter "jogging" the guards memory into unconsciousness and then saying 'I didn't mean to jog him so hard.'

Shaking his head to clear such distracting thoughts and refocusing on the here and now, Wormwood says "I don't think that'll be necessary." As he lightly taps the guard on the top of the head with his pistol. "We have an understanding."

Looking back at the guard cringing at each tap of the pistol, he asks "Now don't we?" The guard does his best to nod his head though it's a little jittery from obvious fear.

Addressing Mason, Wormwood asks "You can't think of anything else to ask him can you?"

"How bouts for his passkey?"

The guard snaps back "they won't get you into anywhere secret, just these offices on the next two floors"

"Oh be quiet." Wormwood says to the guard.

Seeing that they aren't going to get anything else useful out of the guard, Wormwood leans a bit closer to the guard and says "Thanks for all of your help. Now its time to say bonsoir." As he says bonsoir, he hits the guard on the temple with the butt of his pistol, knocking the guard out cold.

After a cursory search of the guard for his passkey and any extra ammo he had on him, Wormwood tosses the extra ammo to Mason, saying "Go grab the pistol he dropped, since you said you could handle pistols ok. Then we need to be going."

"Boo, hope you have recovered enough now. Because we need to get moving."

"Yeam me good" Boo says. "you lead, i follow, hope we find room for me to deck in fast enough"

"Where are da stairs rent-a-cop!?" Hooter moves in close to show his teeth, and a little intimidation. "Tell me now, before a step on your tiny head."

"That won't be necesarry," Wormwood says to Hooter. Also thinking to himself, 'nor will it be effective since I just knocked out the guard.'

Pulling out his pocket secretary, Wormwood pulls up the blueprints Boo had gotten earlier. "Hmm...lets see. We're here, so that means the stairs are over there..." He points in the direction of the stairs to the upper floors.

"Let's head out, I'll take point. Stay a bit behind me and watch my back."

With that said, Wormwood stealthily heads out of the room heading for the stairs, keeping an ear out for any other security guards.

The group heads out, walking towards the wall that holds the elevator, and stairwell, with Wormwood taking the lead. When you arrive, he skillfully removes the crashbar on the door, and snips the wires so the alarm won't go off as you use the fire exit.

Wormwood opens the door, trying to assess how difficult it may to remove/knock down. the first thing he notices is that the door seems to be inset into the wall, so the posibility of knocking ot straight down seems to be nonexistant.

he continues looking over the door....

As he does so, he notices that the latch going into the wall is unussually large and reinforced.