With Shift and Napalm working together, they make quick work of the second firewall. We're through! Let's find this info and regroup with them!" Napalm calls out from his terminal.
[dice=Techcraft (Step 2, take 10)]10+8
With Shift and Napalm working together, they make quick work of the second firewall. We're through! Let's find this info and regroup with them!" Napalm calls out from his terminal.
Staring at the flattened bullet as it disperses its energy across her hardened skin, Midnight watches distantly as it tumbles to the floor. She looks up and throws an answering bolt of air at the thug who fired at her.
Ebon dashes forward and hammers his fist into the guard's chest while Midnight conjures a ball of super-condensed air that finishes him off. The guard flies backward through a table and lies motionless in a heap of papers and splintered wood.
Meanwhile Spore lashes out with a vine like a whip and the second guard cries out in pain.
Staggering back, he levels his weapon once again at the plant-creature, firing in a blind panic.
Hit
Spore takes both shots happily, or as happy as one can take getting shot, pleased that he drew the fire instead of the others. He takes a step to follow the guard, and attacks!
Spore fairly devastates the hapless guard. His vines tangle around the man's legs and with great sweeping motions he first smashes him headlong through a table and then hurls him dismissively against the far wall like a discarded piece of trash.
"...Sorry," Spore says to the unconscious guard as he moves forward alongside Trystt.
...I do hope that's not a SHIELD agent...
As soon as Napalm breaks through the second line of encryption Shift is on it, scanning through files and folders, searching subroutines for any scrap of information.
And then he finds it. Buried in some innocuous config files are a series of encrypted lines of data. It takes him mere moments to crack now that he Napalm's trojan is in place and suddenly he is in possession of the names and locations of nearly three dozen Ten Rings operatives in the region.
Beyond the door is a short corridor leading north. It ends in two solid steel doors, one in the west wall, one in the east.
Midnight indicates the eastern door
We should hurry!
she urges as the alarm klaxon continues its wailing.
It's unlikely these are trapped, i'll take the risk to save on time as we're short on it...
She opens it quickly and moves through...
Ebon follows close behind Midnight, the adrenalin coursing through his body as the alarms go off and time slips away from them.
Fail
As if in mockery of Midnight's assumption, a shocking course of electricity sparks from the steel door as soon as she touches it.
At the sound of her cry of surprise and pain, a voice shouts from beyond the steel door, this time speaking in English.
Who's there? I heard explosions. My name is Abd al Hakim Elbari and I am being held against my will!
The voice, a male, repeats the statement in French, Japanese and Spanish for those who understand the languages.
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Trystt takes Midnight's head in her hands and uses her own ability for fast healing on the amethyst-eyed woman. "That was shocking," Trystt blandly states.
As Trystt looks into your eyes, she might be stifling a giggle.
After that, Trystt looks over the door to find the mechanism that electrocuted Midnight.
Once the door is open, she looks over the prisoner to see if he looks like the image that the group was shown. Then she reaches out with her extrasensory perception just to be certain that they aren't being fooled.
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Eventually Trystt manages to unlock the cell door.
The cell door swings open to reveal a very cramped room with only the most basic provisions. A dirty blanket is piled on the floor in one corner with a bucket to one side. The room is otherwise completely featureless and with the door closed must have been in pitch black.
A man stands in the doorframe. He is past middle aged and thin, but his eyes are alert and he scans each of you with his gaze. His posture is poised and ready and you feel he could probably defend himself if needbe.
Who are you? he asks. Have you been sent by SHIELD?
Napalm and Shift manage to rejoin the group as they are opening the prison cells. "We got the files. Is that our man?" He looks at the thin man. "Is anyone else being held here?"
"If you can walk, we ought to go."
Midnight swears in a string of nigh-incomprehensible sounds as lightning crackles up and down her arm, raising circuit-like burn marks all the way up one arm and on to her face.
Gritting her teeth as the open door reveals the presumed hostage she nods as Lucas arrives.
Good work, and maybe...
She points at the other door
Trystt would you mind? Just for completeness' sake?
She addresses the man
We're here to liberate you from your captors, everything else can wait, now as my teammate asked, can you walk?
I'll walk out of here! the man says sternly and follows your lead as you head back through the complex.
You dash back through the rooms, the alarm still blaring. Half a dozen more men appear as you flee but the Agent stoops and picks up a pistol, returning fire even as Ebon and Spore pile into the men, Shift teleports here and there drawing fire and striking with surgical precision.
Trystt and Midnight rely on their innate abilities to at once confound and disable the enemies while Napalm blasts a way through the gathered insurgents and leads the way out.
The group bursts through the doors and, with the Agent in tow, scramble down the mountainside where, after 30 seconds or so, they see Agent Carter standing at the bottom of a slope, the glass of the Box behind her and the relative normalcy of the training facility beyond that.
Well done. she says, clapping politely. Nice job, you met both objectives.
Ebon watches their back as Midnight and Trystt gets them through to their target. Taking point he runs them out through the complex and out and with a smiles he spots Agent Carter.
"We did amazing." He looks at the group. "That got pretty intense, but I felt we work together very well." Then turning to Carter. "How long did we have left?"
Listen you weren't the '27 Yankees in there. Sharon says honestly. But for your first time in the Box and working together you did really good. she adds.
I thought their performance was commendable. says the Agent you rescued as one of his colleagues hands him a robe. They achieved both objectives and extracted the package before reinforcements arrived. In and out in under 3 minutes, Agent Carter.
Before she can answer Mockingbird appears behind her and says;
Yeah well, Ida done it in two. though she is grinning as she says it. Nice moves Karate-chop. she adds looking at Ebon. And damn you tech guys got skills, broke those firewalls like they were nothing. And air-girl, plant-guy, Tinkerbell. Very nice. Be good to see you around, maybe give you a real test in the cage one day.
She strides off, hips swinging in her tight costume and blonde hair swaying; Adios!
Sharon just shakes her head.
She's actually a damned fine Agent. Borderline genius too. PhD in Biology if you can believe it. Listen, seriously you did great, but it's clear you haven't worked as a team before and whether you decide to go your separate ways or not, at some point you're all going to have to work in some kind of team. So it's worth bearing in mind. I've got to run, but you can spend as much time in here as you like, I'm satisfied you passed your induction.
Napalm watches Mockingbird go...for a long moment. He suddenly realizes that he's staring and laughs to cover his actions. "Ha, two minutes! Right, and I bet she could do it solo too. Seriously, that and a PhD?" He shakes his head.
Lucas waits until Sharon had left before turning to the others. "Hey, don't take any crap from Carter there. We did damned good. I mean, we haven't trained together and this is our first experience in this kind of environment. I mean, hell, did you see Spore just yank that guy off his feet and batter him against the wall?! That was boss!"
"Come on, let's get something to eat. My treat. You think those were really Agents in there letting us kick the crap out of them?"
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"Nah, I bet they were robots of some kind made to look like human-like. Or Alien-like, in this case. They wouldn't risk the possibility of a real agent getting killed in a training exercise, that would be a waste of resources. Still it was fun, and I guess we learned a bit about what each of us can do. Love your bombs, Napalm - I'd love to get to play with a few of them myself, though I doubt I'd be as competent as you."
Spore grins during the debrief, feeling proud of what they'd done. It was nice being around a group of peers again-- something he'd not done in a long while.
At Napalm's compliment his smile grows even wider, though he hesitates for a bit until Shift chimes in, assuaging his concerns for the 'guards'.
"Eat...? Where? I haven't spent any real amount of time out in the open yet..."
"Uh, I was thinking maybe pizza? Do you eat pizza? Or we could go for salads and smoothies....uh, unless salads are offensive?"
"Uh, I was thinking maybe pizza? Do you eat pizza? Or we could go for salads and smoothies....uh, unless salads are offensive?"
"Yah thanks Mockingbird, maybe next time we can have a little go in the cage i'll show you some karate-chop moves." He smiles then turns to the others.
"Yeah, let's go get something to eat. We all worked pretty hard in there." He rolls his right shoulder, and lifts up his shirt to show a few bruises, his large tattoo showing. "They might not have been real but I'm still feeling their hits.
Midnight stares daggers after Mockingbird
'Air girl'...
She crosses her arms and turns back to the group
Thanks Agent Carter, and you Agent
she nods at the man the team rescued.
A bit more polish and we'll hopefully we more cohesive, better comms would be a plus.
She turns to Lucas
I don't believe Spore is vegetable-based, more arboreal. So it would be much the same as my suggesting we go for a steak, and then apologising for perhaps offending you because you too are made of meat...
She smiles.
"Look we're kinda a team." He points to Midnight and Napalm. "A member recently decided this life was a little too much for her, we haven't really considered taking on anyone else?..." He questions what it would actually be to invite more people. "In to our team, we were thrown together really but after today I don't think ether Midnight or Napalm would disagree with me. We should work together we could make a very formidable team, a lot of good change could happen with us patrolling the streets.." He stops himself waffling on. "But I guess we could take about all this over food."
The group steps out of SHIELD HQ and makes the short few block walk back to Central Park where the sun blazes over the swathes of green, the manicured lawns and beautiful groves of trees and still lakes.
Napalm explains that he and Maggie sometimes grab a quick lunch at the American Art cafe in the museum rather than staying cooped up in the lab all day.
He leads the group through the park where people occasionally stop and stare after the group and a few come up and ask Spore, Trystt and Midnight in particular if they can take selfies with them.
Over a simple lunch the group discusses where they have come from, what they've encountered and what they have planned next.
So indeed, that's how we ended up together, chasing an enemy called 'the Dragon' and finding out he was half our height!
Midnight smiles as she finishes filling in the newcomers as to how the original three had gotten to meeting them.
So do you have any plans for what you'd like to do now, aside from work with SHIELD?