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The mission given to them: hunt down the murderer that killed Adept Pegasus of the Fecund Coin. After a bit of the initial anger has passed, the call for an immediate death has subsided and the request to capture the perpetrator alive has been made.
He's been tracked to a warehouse which initial looks indicate he's fortified a little with mundane and magical means, though he hasn't gotten a terrible amount of time to do so. Now's the time to strike without giving him the time to dig in much harder.
Their choice of approaches are limited by chain link fences, locked doors and very high window from the ground, at least from the outside. It is currently night and lights is coming out of the windows.
Fox, sitting in the back seat of Petra's van, snickers wildly. (The van got Machine Invisibility too, because Fox had enough space in her targets). "Oh no, high windows, how ever will we get up there?" she laughs, leaning on Vasha and watching out said windows. "Oh noooooo." And the Thyrsus collapses into giggles.
Hearth had broken out her soccermom mobile for team transportation and sat in the drivers seat about a block away from the warehouse. It came complete with an old "My Kid's an honor school at Lincoln Elementary School" bumper sticker. She was dressed like a soccer mom too in black leggings, a long sleeve black shirt, and her blond hair tucked up under a cute little cloche hat. She'd passed her sword off to whomever had called shotcut and smirked back at Fox. "And fences. We could drive straight in if you'd like."
"If only we happen people with us that could manipulate the fabric of space. Gee whiz what are we going to do? I guess we have to turn back and go home then come up with a new strategy that involves all those things." snaps her fingers "Darn."
Vasha is riding shotgun because of course Vasha is riding shotgun. It helps that he has an actual shotgun. Perhaps just to assert his dibs to the position by dint of literalism. In any case, the black clad and tactically acoutremented Guardian is watching the city out the passenger side window, checking the corners and the high points. Trying to see what the others might miss.
Once they arrive, Vasha surveys the terrain with a professional eye and sucks his tooth a little. "Nice fucking vantage point. You could see a flea on a Cossack's dick from up there."
Liezel looks over the warehouse, chewing her lower lip. "That looks like the sort of place I might pick to very effectively hide that I had much more effective defenses inside," she offers quietly. "... or the place someone with no other options might hole up in. It's hard to say." She rolls her fingers, cracking her knuckles without touching them, sitting in her own black tactleneck outfit in the back.
"Vasha, hook up our brains and I'll go do a sweep." Fox sits up from leaning forward to put her chin on Vasha's shoulder, shaking out her arms loosely. "So once that's set, Someone should open a window." She wiggles happily in her seat and unbuckles her seatbelt.
There's a brief flare of magic from the front of the car, heavily subdued by the veiling magic that is woven along with it. A polite burp into the back of the hand as nimbus goes. But it ends with him seemingly a bit distracted, then nodding his head once. "We're good." His window starts to roll down, "Be safe. I'll cover you."
Hearth pulled off a necklace that had a polished bit of mistletoe wood as a pendant and held it up, seeking out the nearest hint of the abyss.
"Should we merge our minds so we can communicate without saying anything?" She offers curious if the others would be interested in such a thing
"There's a Hallow inside," Hearth said, after the pendant swung directly towards the warehouse like pendulum. "And something of the Abyss that's trying to screw with it. It might be best to shut it down before we go in."
Fox, who already has such a link with Vasha since she just asked for it, is already in the process of folding herself inward. Did everybody want to be in a van with a massive horned owl? TOO LATE, NOW YOU ARE. She carefully hops up to Vasha's shoulder, gently grooms his hair in a very familiar and affectionate way, and then hops to his lap -- gently -- and up to the car's window edge, pushing off instantly to swoop down and then up, toward the roof, invisible to prying eyes thanks to Vasha's weaving.
"I'm getting a feed from Fox. She's up." Vasha, true to his word to the owl before its departure, leans out the passenger side door with his rifle and keeps himself veiled from prying eyes. "If you want to get in on the feed, grab my left hand. I can buffer her feed for you. It can be a bit much to read unfiltered."
Aletheia is briefly pushed against the wall of the van while the owl is there with an OOOF "Big . . . Owl . . . cute though." Then suddenly they're gone "Oh thank God I can breathe again."
Liezel reaches out to take Vasha's left hand as offered, braced- she trusts him when he says it can be A Bit Much.
Hearth trusted Vasha to keep an eye on the scouting and took out a notebook, sketching out a little diagram of the place and jotting down a few runes around it, redoing a few as she worked out spell parameters.
She cuts smoothly through the air; Fox loves being birds and she is very, very good at it with Vasha's soup up. Not gonna lie, on her way up there, she does a barrel roll.
Lazy, invisible circles (save to the group, of course) way up there in the air, and Vasha gets back a constant stream. He knows how the world looks through Fox's eyes, how she instinctively sees the splashes of magic on the world. Here she sees movement in between the walls erected, made of Death and Prime, the Matter splatter on the walls. No sign of the target. But something.
This, of course, along with the overwhelming feed of wind and freedom and owl-sight and strange movements of her avian body, all gets fed directly to Vasha. It's up to him to decide what to relay.
Those willingly joining in on Vasha's offered tactical brainlink? They receive an edited version of Fox's live feed. All the rolls and jostling and weird alien body sensations-- that's all removed. The image is stabilized, the vision stripped down to only pertinent information. Space, distance, obstruction, traces of this magic and that, and pinging on the psyche like green text in a heads up display. Just the facts. Data to parse. But a few sources of stimulus to choose from rather than the millions being fed into Vasha's noggin with that direct link.
Sometimes being a buffer is a kindness.
"Might not be a bad idea to drop the hallow, Hearth. But I'd like to have an ease route through the fence sorted first, unless you'd all prefer to simply portal in and do this 'Arrow style. Doors and corners."
"I'm up for in and out. I can open it and we can all go on through and start a storm! I'm pretty open to all avenues in this case."
"Timing," she agreed. "It'd be best to drop the Hollow right before we go in so I'll be too busy to dust the fences."
"I would like a brief moment to fire on them before we move. Anything in the room with the target is going to lose a tremendous amount of potentia. That should make our jobs easier."
Vasha looks to Liezel at this point, "Can you dust the fence? We infil while Hearth drops the hallow. I can lead the team in. You can cover the route back. She can cover our withdrawal to the van." Vasha's doing that Acanthus think on his feet tactical planning stuff they talk about in film.
"Which is to say, yes, you could fire the magic cannon." Vasha's grin is understanding. Maybe not all Guardians hate fun.
Hearth nodded to Liezel. "Planning on burning up the potentia with Celestial Fire?" she asked.
Flittering back to Vasha along with all of her visual input? I can handle the fence.
"Wind, but yes. Fire seems- overly aggressive, since we intend to take prisoners." Liezel nods towards Vasha, lips curling in a quiet smile, nodding again as Fox claims the fence herself. "Which is to say, I have a bullet with an awful lot of hot air meant for only the most deserving of murderers and their friends."
"I am not sure if that was funny but I wanted to try."
"Fox can dust the fence from her position," Vasha relates, solving that hitch in the timing. "Three seconds to roll out, three to cross... maybe six to the entrance. So if you want to time your surprise for the hallow for nine seconds from mark, and so long as everyone is agreed on a quiet start and trying to catch him flat footed? We can do this on my mark. So."
Democracy, apparently. His hand goes up, "Who likes this stupid plan?"
"Could also turn it into essence maybe and give it to some of the local spirits? They might appreciate a gesture like that.' a shrug of her shoulders "I like the plan."
Hearth pulled a pretty little candy box, a single cookie inside (though there might have been more before). "I whipped this up earlier tonight. It should wipe out a good deal of potential. Non-lethal celestial fire."
"I like the plan," Liezel offers, glancing to Aletheia. "Do you mean turn the fence into essence? I do not know how to turn Potentia into Essence."
A look at Hearth's cookie. "Does he have to eat the cookie?"
"The Potentia, the spirits would LOVE that."
She laughed. "No, you do, and you cast the spell inside it. A bit like firebreathing. It's a cinnamon gingersnap."
"It's a good idea. I just don't know how, I'm afraid." She lights up a little at the cookie description! "That's clever!"
Flickering back to Vasha, I'm not feeding what I don't know. Let me know when and I'll dust it.
"Right." Vasha says examining the confections. "I'm going to make this the pocket for my tactical pastry." An he does. He pulls out a bandage from a vest pocket and replaces the bandage with the pastry.
Nobody get shot a lot.
"Okay. On my mark, we go. Nine seconds, Hearth." And in his mind, to Fox: Three seconds, drop the fence. Then the door at ground level. We infil at ground level. Liezel's covering our infil, Hearth our retreat. And with that, he backs away from the hood of the van and begins moving around front and towards the fence line.
"Mark! Last one there is a capitalist."
Hearth had begun her ritual, chanting softly and directing her power into the Blasphemy of occluding the Hallow until it fell into dormancy. She nodded to Vasha when he gave the Mark, and released the Spell out ahead of the team.
Vasha moves with the alacrity of lightning, generally, on account of a little Acanthus intercession. And he moves with absolute faith that the fence won't be there when he's going to be passing through it. Full steam ahead, because he said mark, and that started a clock, and these people are all professionals.
Active mage sight up, filtering Fox's owl-cam feed, relaying the things that are popping up out of his fate sight, trying not to overwhelm those sharing in his brain, but receive only the sense he gleans from it all. He scans the shadows over the barrel of his rifle, checks the sky above, the trees, the fence line. And double-checks the angles of objects Fox can't see from her perch overhead. Feeding useful intel back her way, too.
On Vasha's mark, the fence dissipates, a whole section of it crumbling to dust. The owl circles down, then, and continues to circle a few feet over their heads, using the owl's keen eyesight to keep an eye on everyone's safety.
"Well allons y!" She says enthusiastically and starts to follow after the others, moving as quickly as she can thanks to the Acceleration, that isn't much of a problem
The Fence gets dusted, the hole is big enough for them to go through, the group moves to the door and as they reach it, they all feel Hearth's magic suppresses and dismantle the hallow that she can sense over there. They reach the front door, without issues and find it already unlocked, the lock already fucked up beyond repair.
A somewhat high-pitched scream of anger is heard from inside of the warehouse, noise begin to rise inside. (cliffhanger pause)
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