2009-10-23: Stop This Train - Shadow-walking

Starring:

Elena_V4icon.pngEric_V4icon.pngJezabel_V4icon.pngNamir_V4icon.pngRafael_V4icon.png

Special Guest Star:

Daphne_V4icon.png

And the Red Team, supplied by Aaron.

Date: October 23, 2009

Summary:

The middle of the train has some hitches, but otherwise comes away with a couple rescued people.


"Stop This Train - Shadow-walking"

Undisclosed Train

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"You ever wonder why we're here?"

"It's one of life's great mysteries, isn't it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence, or is there really a God, watching everything, you know? With a plan for us and stuff. I don't know man, but it keeps me up at night."

"What?! I mean, why are we out here, in this box car in the middle of nowhere?"

"Oh. Uh. Yeah."

"What's all that stuff about God?"

"Uh, hum? Nothing."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Sure?"

"Yeah."

The night has not been without event. As the train barreled closer into the darkness of the upper New York landscapes. Trees cast long shadows, increasing the darkness. One of the back cars breaks off, getting left behind as it slows down. At first the slowing is gradual, then it stops more quickly. There's the sound of a vehicle, possibly more than one, but the rest of the train continues on.

A second shudder loosens a car onto the tracks, a black shadow moving to run across the one still speeding off into the night.

The car continues down the track, slower, isolated. The trees help cut off sight from the other sections. For the moment.

Night. Shadows. They just want to make things easy for Eric Lancaster don't they? He watches from the shadows as that car slowly rolls almost lazily down the track. "In position," He murmurs to his partner in crime as he glances over towards the other figure near him. "Ready or not…"

The man raised one gloved hand to rest on his partner's shoulder for a moment. Dressed from head to toe in black, with a full helment enclosing his features, one with a gasmask included in it he's just a faceless as most of the agents that guard the prisoners. At one hip is a taser, and the other hand is a short metal nightstick.

With that he closes his hand around his partner's shoulder and closes his eyes.

With that he's reaching out with those powers of his to feel the darkness in the inside of the car. Expanding it, deepending it until it should be pitch-black inside that car and with a pull on the woman's shoulder steps them both though the darkness around him to the darkness in the back of that traincar.

Darkstep through shadows is something she has never done before. Eric had just gotten better at it. With the abyssal portal opened, she steps inside and… before she knows it, shadows shift, change, and now she's in a different place entirely. Dressed in the black, fitted jumpsuit that Gene had bought for her, she feels a little bit like Catwoman, except without the ears, and whatever cuteness that might come out of the outfit is horrifically rendered asunder by the functional pair of goggles and gasmask that she wears over her face - outfitted much the same way like Eric. It did well to obscure their features, for certain, and once they've reached their destination, Elena lifts a hand to stay Eric. He would know to cloak them in shadow while she does this, they had a plan coming in.

She closes her eyes, to try and get a bead on how many bodies are in the car, extending outwards. She won't move until she manages to get an idea as to how many people are close to where they are.

Her radar here won't help too much - by Ping alone she doesn't know who are bogeys and who are friendlies. These, she'll have to determine by sight. It helped that Eric's nightvision is viral… the ability can piggyback onto her and -she-, in turn, would be able to see in the dark. And so she waits, quietly collecting the data.

She could hear noises, from the other cars breaking away. Peter. She had been appraised of what little there was of a plan on her end. She just… didn't know which others were coming.

"Seriously though, why are we here? As far as I can tell, all these guys are drugged into unconsciousness, so why the hell do— what was that?"

"I dunno."

"Command," one guard speaks into his comm, "this is Freelancer Alpha One, over? Come in, over?"

"Something doesn't smell right."

"Something doesn't feel right; we're slowing down."

"Command? We have a problem," the other guard says into his own comm only moments before the shadows creep up and consume the interior of the car.

"Grif: flashlight."

Light pierces the darkness, revealing little more than murky grayness. Grif can barely see the face of Simmons in all the darkness. "Well, that didn't work as well as planned, did it?"

The two guards unholster their tasers, sticking to less lethal weapons until they know what's going on. Last thing they need to do is shoot themselves with bullets.

As Eric steps out of the darkness in the corner of the room he pauses a moment then as he looks towards the sound of the quiet voices. A nod towards then and he smirks behind his mask there as he pulls the nightstick from the holster.

"Your up."

His whisper is towards Elena as he sees the gray light of the flashlight in his darkness. Now that he isn't concentration on getting people away he instead bends his will against that flashlight. Inch by inch is would seem that the light from that item is being swollowed up, almost like something in the shadows is just taking bites out of the light, dimming and then extinguishing that feeble gray in a slow methodical manner.

…that should keep the Guards attention.

Her eyes open when she finally gets a bead on the two guards inside of the car - as well as the rest of the prisoners… but in the dark it's easy to see them, they're the only ones mobile, the only ones standing. Elena doesn't move from her spot - they're well within range, she doesn't have to. Locking onto both with her radar ability, her control piggybacks into the biological signals that she picks and chooses by sight - first at this man named Grif, and then the one who indentifies himself as Freelancer Alpha One. Oh Military, you and your codenames.

The young brunette extends a hand, and makes a gun out of her fingers. This is no Spirit Gun, unfortunately… rather it looks like she's about to give the hapless guards inside the car the guns with just her one set of fingers. And the gesture doesn't even make sense, because there's TWO of them, not just one.

But this wouldn't be Elena's band of crazies if there wasn't something that referenced some kind of action movie something.

Bang.

It's a simple thought, but an intense blast of searing, brutal, debilitating pain, meant to shock a person's body and to render her chosen targets unconscious. It was akin to the sensation of getting crushed at the back of the head by a bat, the same signals used to fool the body into thinking a heavy bookshelf has just been dropped on their heads, or heavier.

The two guards try to see into the darkness, and swear they heard a voice when Eric spoke, but without any form of confirmation, how are they supposed to act on such a thought? The mental blast has its intended effect, and both Grif and Simmons crumple like rag dolls onto the floor of the train car, their tasers scattering along the corrugated metal flooring. Their non-lethal weapons are out of range, not that they'd do them much good at this point. That was just too easy.

It is undoubtedly fortunate that the drug dosage is enough to keep Namir out. Otherwise all this noise would be very, very wonky. In the meantime, he's just out.

Down they go, and forwards moves Eric though the darkness. First the tasers and sidearms are pulled out of reach. Then he's going for the com-gear they might have, silently tossing one though the darkness towards Elena. Though now that darkness lightens slightly as he isn't concentrating on it anymore, so people who are looking might just be able to see. "Pardon me gentlemen." He mutters softly under his breath as he kneels next to Grif, glancing up now finally towards the prisioners around the edge of the train.

A pause then before he glances towards Elena there. Anyone you know?

She reaches out, catching the com gear tossed to her by Eric. The young woman sets it in her ear, adjusting it and hooking the rest of the portable console to her belt. "We'll need to monitor their transmissions," Elena murmurs. "They alerted the others that there might be a problem, we're going to need to work quickly. I don't want to get lethal. We have to keep this precise. Keys too, please." She surveys the rows of bodies. "We'll need to get their hoods off. Remember the Level 5 file Peter showed us - just the ones he deems okay. If you don't recall the person being on the list he gave us, he goes too." She strides over to the first one, yanking hoods off while taking care not to dislodge the drug tubes from their noses. Her first one, after she pulls a Scooby and unmasks him, is…

She stares at Namir's face.

"….I know him, he's SWAT," she tells Eric. "Some… Papa and I were on a ferry… nevermind, I'll tell you later." She tosses the mask away and pulls the tube from Namir's nostrils. She then fires a bit of her control into his system to jolt him awake. "God, what's your name…" she whispers, trying to remember as she starts unlocking him when the keys are tossed to her.

Consciousness is achieved for Namir, but at a price. Whatever sounds might be in the train suddenly jump to shrieking levels, then snap down to nothingness almost instantly before leveling out to something resembling normal. The Israeli opens his eyes, blinks a few times, then jerks against his restraints instinctively until it's apparent that Elena is actually releasing him. "Where am I?" he asks.

"Keys," Eric replies as he stands up and tosses the keys to the woman there. "The'll still be backup coming this way if anything else goes wrong in the other cars." He warns the woman as he kicks the weapons further away, letting the natural light return to the interior of the car. "And there might be some coming outside I can't tell." He adds as he reaches into a pocket of the outfit and pulls out a handfull of black zip-ties. "I'll get thease two tied up. Which one do you want?" He adds as he leans down to make sure even if the guards /do/ wake up from Elena's painbomb that they would find hands and wrists both wrapped with zip-ties.

He's standing against when suddenly the sounds in the train go haywire. The rolling of the tires, the breathing, the thump of booted foot against wooden floor at a shriek that causes Eric's eyes to go unfocoused and the young man to stumble a moment.

"Son-of-a…ow…" He mutters. "…we are /trying/ to get you out of here…" A nod then towards Elena. "…alright. If he says so. I can't take more than three on a trip or I might passout."

…after all this he might just passout anyway, but that'll come later.

She claps her hands to her ears instinctively at that sudden snap of sound before it dies yet again. "In a traincar, courtesy of the Federal Government," Elena replies to Namir as she releases him. "This is the Japanese Internment Program of the twenty-first century, except it's for people like us. I don't know if you remember me, but we can get reacquainted later. We need to get you out of here. Can you stand? I'll have my friend port you out in a minute." She lets him get his bearings, but she's already moving to the next set of people. "If you could help us unhood the people in this car, I'd appreciate it. We're not releasing all of them, some of them are dangerous." And gets what's coming to them, but she does not say the last part.

She nods in approval with what Eric is doing, glancing at the agents. Is she really about to kidnap one of them? She's seriously contemplating it. "We got that voicemail. We can easily find out where Gene is," she tells him. "If we believe the caller. But I'm thinking of bringing one home to giftwrap and give to someone I know who knows a helluvalot more about interrogation than me. Let's pick…" She points to the one who called himself Freelancer Alpha One. "He might not know much but I'll let Mr. B take a crack at him."

She moves onto the next person, drawing the hood off Jezabel. Not recognizing her from the file, she pulls the tube from her nose to try and wake her up.

Noise. Falling bodies, darkness more complete even than the thready rancid muffling that's been wrapped around Rafael's head too long now. Shiiit. What— at the second layer of mechanical chaos that wracks the air outside his cowl, he makes a sluggish effort at sitting upright: sort of a twitch of his arms in their sockets, success in curling the toes inside his shoe if not in completing an actual kick of his foot or any particularly flashy accomplishment like that.

Voices. He can barely make out what they're saying, but what he can make out seems to be of relevance to his particular situation. Bound, suppressed, and half-comatose still, Rafael makes his best effort at getting their attention: he twitches his other shoulder, exuming a saliva-slimed mumble almost lost under the rack-a-rack of wheels moving below.

Jezabel coughs a little as the tube is removed, and blearly opens her eyes. "Where the hell?" she mutters, though the words aren't the most coherent things to come outof hermouth, their the best she'll manage at this point in time.

"Federal Government?" Namir takes a moment to get to his feet, but the jolt from Elena — responsible for the odd noise levels — is a good enough boost to keep him conscious and mobile. He starts making his way through the car, pulling off hoods, Rafael's being one of the first. "I thought it was a separate company responsible for this sort of thing." The fact that he works for the NYPD is a bit of a blow, especially given his loyalty to such.

"Its complicated…like most things are when the Government gets involved," Eric replies towards the man as he finishes dealing with the guards. As he raises to his feet he hands one of the men's tasers towards Namir. Butt first. "Here, you might can use this better than us." He says easily enough before he turns his own attention towards the hoods. "Right. I'll get him out of here with the first group them and we can drop him off with your friend." He replies towards the woman in black.

Sorry Freelancer Alpha One you are gonna have a new friend.

As he turns his attention to the hooded figures, its the mumbling form of Jezabel that he gets to first, pulling the hood off her head. "Easy. Easy. Here to help…"

…well…sorta.

"Not anymore. Now we're -all- getting baited and trapped," Elena replies to Namir. "I'll give you the lowdown later….as quickly as I can. You must be anxious to get back to your family, or friends…" Whoever his loved ones are. She has never met Dr. Applebaum's husband, otherwise she wouldn't be as calm. When he unmasks Rafael, she tosses the keys to him. "He's one of the ones that are deemed okay by my contact." She yanks off a few more hoods. Those she recognizes from Level 5 without Peter's notes are left alone, however those who are get to be uncuffed.

"Make sure you gag him first," she tells Eric absently.

She'll let him help Jezabel, but then she starts moving towards the others. "I should be a little nervous that it's so quiet. Either we're doing a good job, or something is egregiously wrong. Do you need weapons?" She asks this of Namir who, she knows, is probably highly trained to wield them.

Jezabel mmphs. "Took you bloody long enough, didn't it?" she questions, glowering a little as she shifts her gaze about the train, trying to see as much as she possibly can in the very limited light.

It's not completely quiet. There's a helicopter in the distance. Or at least there was a second ago. Then it sounds very strange, the engine making a different noise… and then suddenly there's a loud crash, an explosion. And the helicopter can no longer be heard. There's also some loud cracks in the distance. Gunshots. They may have it quiet, but on both sides, up and down the tracks, there is noise.

Now that he has a direction — and a rescue one at that! — Namir is all business. He accepts the taser from Eric with a nod and gives it a cursory examination before catching the keys from Elena, setting to work on uncuffing and de-tubing Rafael. "Do you have weapons to spare?" he asks. A gun would make him feel a lot more secure than a taser, at least. At the sounds coming from outside, he pauses, tensing, amplifying things around his ears in order to pick up the noise better. "If everyone in here is as … talented as you're implying, we could reasonably hold them off. How did you get in?" No mention of his loved ones. Sam is probably ready to decimate half a city block, but focus is required here, and such thoughts are a distraction right now.

"Well we wern't really running a timetable. Sorry to be late," Eric replies with a wry smirk behind his mask towards Jezabel. "Let me get some more of thease hoods off then I'll get your chains." He tells the woman before reaching down to scoop up one of the guards sidearms. "Here." He calls towards the SWAT member tossing him the pistol in an underhanded arc as he starts to pull the hoods off the rest of the prisoners. Need to figure out just who to take and who to leave.

"Yeah, but they have a small army out there. The'll just blow up the train if they have too I bet, and I got us in and I can get people out. I shadow-walk." He adds as he finishes with the hoods. "Need the keys over here for this one." He adds as he holds his hand out towards Namir.

It sounds rather hairy outside, with the helicopter exploding and the gunshots blazing. Elena grits her teeth. "Hopefully all that craziness keeps said small army busy while we bail you guys out." She walks back over to the downed guards, relieving them of their weapons. They were military, they might have tasers but surely they had sidearms. She even checks the pantlegs, where they might be. Whatever she finds, she hands to Namir. And then she'll move on, unhooding Allison Church and trying to wake her up, though she does not unshackle her as of yet.

Allison stirs very slowly, despite the fact that a tube just got pulled out of her nose. The first thing she does before opening her eyes is almost sneeze from the irritation in her sinuses. "Oh fuck," are the first words out of her mouth. Her eyes are unfocused when she opens them and she has to blink several times before things clear up enough to see her rescuer, which is precisely when she notices she's been shackled. "Where the fuck am I? Who the— who are you?" Quite a mouth on that one, clearly.

Guns are taken, checked, and tucked away wherever Namir can put them — which is to say, he steals a belt from one of the downed agents. After tossing the keys back to Eric, he de-hoods whatever prisoners are left before adding, "It would be a good idea to start shadow-walking people out of here, then."

"On it," Eric replies after he catches the keys and turns to unlock Jezabel from her locks and turns his attention towards Allison. "I can't take many at once. You want to go with the first group or stay?" He tosses the question towards Namir even as he is moving to unlock Allison's chains. "Calm down, we are here to try to help get you out of here." He says towards the woman with a mouth on her as he reaches for her schackles. "You are in a traincar, we are trying to get you out of here." He adds with a look between Jezabel and Allison. "Alright, you'll both be on the first trip out."

The artist formerly known as Rafael can hear it: cloth riffling, plastic tubing loosing out with a scratching separation of tape and then, abruptly, he can see again. As it were. It's still dark as fuck, mind you, and his eyes are watering from the effects of having his nasal passage irritated by insidious chemicals and the tubing that transported them into his biological system, but he can see. The hood's— gone, he doesn't know where, discarded out of Namir's hand as if it were no easy thing.

"Thank you sir," he wheezes out at the Israeli, flexing his fingers inside their cuffs. He has all of about forty seconds to enjoy the return of sight and sound before the pressure of his returning ability mounts, stacks itself inside his cranium and begins to adjust basic perception with its preternatural perspicacity. He grimaces slightly, wipes his nose on the sleeve of his shoulder. Startles briefly at a whooping chop of helicopter blades, audible through the plating of the train car.

Jezabel has had sufficient time between being unhooded and unlocked to no longer be fuming, and to have managed to stretch her legs, just a little bit. Once she's uncuffed she does attempt to stand, though she's forced to use the nearest solid item to stabalize her, she hasn't moved much in while, so this is no surprise. "Great," she responds, in an almost enthusiastic tone to Eric.

"I can stay," says Namir in typical Namir-fashion. Of course he'd opt to be one of the last people out. Then his attention goes to Rafael, patting the man's shoulder. "Take it easy. Can you stand? These people will be getting you out of here."

"Excuse me?" It's a bizarre response to come from someone who was just told that she would be one of the first to escape from confinement, but Allison asks it anyway. "Is this because I'm a girl? Because that is so fucking sexist. I oughta kick your ass," she says, finally standing up and nearly falling over as a result of the slow motion of the train, and the fact that she hasn't stood up for God knows how long. Her stumble lands her against another one of the prisoners, one Frank DuFresne. "Oh my God, Frankie?" She turns to Eric, "Please, you have to untie him. He's my boyfriend. I'm not leaving without him."

With enough people having penguin-like trouble achieving upright, Rafael is conservative with his projections of what he's physically capable of doing. He uses the corrugated metal of the wall to heave himself up, his palm scratching clumsily across the texture of it, without quite catching enough abrasion to open skin. "I can stand," he decides, his boots thumping awkwardly as a new colt. "Thanks. I… I—

"Something's coming." Halfway into the previous sentence, his voice changes, sharpens, some bizarre hybrid of genuine panic and rigidly contracted concentration pushing through the easy tenor of voice. "Darkness—" Is it theirs? He doesn't know who these people are and his focus is already split too much, pushing through the permutations of further distance to try and ascertain which nefarious faction these gun-toting raiders happen to belong to. There are gun-toting raiders from everywhere.

His fingers close haphazardly on Namir's arm, aggression absence from the fact: he's trying to keep the older man's attention. "People are going to die." Whispering under these circumstances is foolhardy and difficult; he's left to channel a hiss through the air. "The other train, someone— someone here."

A single nod to Namir before glancing back towards Allison and blinking for a moment. "…well actually no, but…right…we'll get him give me a second." Well looks like the first group /won't/ be Allison and the rest. "I'll be right back…" He adds as he tosses the keys to Namir. "Get Frankie for her would you?" He adds as he touches Raphel with one hand and Jezabel with the other. "Hold on, this won't take long…and don't worry." He closes his eyes for a moment and a mass of shadows raise up from the floor for a moment to engulf the three.

And when its gone so are they.

Only to appear hardly a half-second later in a shallow depression in the ground near to the traintracks. All three stepping out of the shadows as Eric releases them and his power. "Stay here though, I'll be back with the rest as soon as I can." He says as he staggers just a half-step.

"I'm coming with you," Elena tells Eric, once they come in, reaching a hand to touch his shoulder. "Give me a second, Eric," she murmurs, her dark eyes flaring gold. There was a point in her life when her boosting capabilities had only led her to believe she could make people stronger. Faster. More dexterous. More able to cope with strain. Now that she knew a lot more about her Evolved abilities, its basis, the cornerstone of that scientific knowledge, she uses it for better means…

She amplifies Eric's powers.

"I can't have you falling over on me when we've got more people to get out. And you might need my help. Let's go."

The train car might have stayed quiet outside so far - unlike all the ruckus going on in either direction - but that doesn't mean it's totally empty there. Against the front door is pressed a small body, not dressed in black but equipped with the same utilitarian gas mask flattening her otherwise fly-away blonde hair. Daphne appears to have been eavesdropping on the conversation inside, or at least trying. Her hand reaches for the bolt-locked door about the same time that Eric appears; she turns, startled, when he says something and she wasn't expecting a voice so close.

She seems like she would bolt but first there's this squint of near recognition for the darkness manipulator. A look of skepticism and bewilderment, she examines the figures who appeared. But that's just first. Then there really is the bolting as she sprints down the stairs, around the car, and off down the tracks towards where the back end of the train was left behind.

The hissed warning is taken with a lifted eyebrow, but Namir doesn't get much time to speak otherwise. Raf is being transported out, and the Israeli is left there in the car, taking the keys to undo Frank's restraints. "Here," he utters, ears and body alert to whatever may come. Wait for them to come back. And then he's moving toward the door — not to open it but to keep an eye on it, assuming any intruders will be coming through there.

Only the devils are inside the walls. There's some excessive work as Allison works at pulling DuFresne up. A bit of a jingle that just can't quite be explained by the shackles, but it's quite likely the sound of a metal can hitting the corrugated metal of the ceiling that will get Namir's attention. The small cannister hists the ceiling and from within bursts forth a cloud of fine mist, which spreads quickly throughout the top of the car, slowly drifting downwards. Clearly, the guards did not possess the only weapons on board. Frank DuFresne sports a shotgun, but Allison seems to have stuck with a pistol. "Drop your weapons," she says.

Suddenly: earth. Soil, that is. Despite that Rafael has gone a great many different places in the past few months, he's never actually managed to depart the planet itself. He stumbles slightly when his flesh recorporealizes, blinks dizzily in the off-light of the evening. When he wipes the edge of his hand across his nose, it comes away sticky with a thin, coppery patina of blood, is licked away cursorily before he wipes it down on the fabric of his jumpsuit. He nods at Eric's instruction, even as he turns his head to stare down the winding tracks for a moment stretched long over the queasy certainty of death.

"Are you all right?" he asks aloud, glancing at Jezabel.

Eric pauses, looking just as shocked to find a blonde there as the blonde is to see him.

Then a blink, wait. He reconises the hair…

"Roadrunner?" He says as he watches the woman suddenly dart off. "Give me back my files woman!" He calls after her…but…she's already gone…

Twitch. Twitch.

"Freeking /theif/…" He mutters to himself before shaking his head. "And I could kiss you for that." He adds towards Elena with a smile in his voice if not seen in the mask. Then he nods towards those outside and the shadows come again, stronger then time with the help of his partner. They come quicker, swirling around him and Elena before again darkness bursts into the corner of the train and Eric ports right back in….

…into what amounts to an ambush.

Lovely timing.

Peter made sure that she had a gas mask on, so when the portal swallows her up, to reinject her back into the traincar, she sees particles of mist in the air, and the two people with guns. Weapons? What weapons? She didn't bring any. Then again, she didn't need them. Homing in on the two that hauled themselves up, she uses the same trick that felled the first two guards. She doesn't need to use any gestures, all she has to do is do it. And unlike before, unlike those years in which she had been afraid to use her powers, there was no hesitation. They're sudden teleportation in might scare them. They might pull the trigger. It might kill someone in this room.

The twin blasts homed and fired on Allison and Frankie are extremely unforgiving. She won't kill them, but they'll probably wake up with a severe headache.

Shoot first. Ask questions later.

Elena is clearly from Jack Derex's School of Hard Knocks.

Shoot first, ask questions later are the same orders Allison and DuFresne got too, which is precisely why DuFresne turns immediately when he sees the darkness creeping in, and, not waiting to see if he's got his aim right, pulls the trigger, hurling buckshot in the direction of Eric and Elena's entrance. It's hardly fatal. Nor is the shot Allison tries to pull off with Namir's knee when she realizes that shit is hitting the fan. Unfortunately, she never gets to pull the trigger for both sleeper agents crumple to the ground in a heap.

Naturally, the first thing Namir attempts to do is make things a lot louder inside the car, but it doesn't work. Whatever the canister may be, it's neutralized his ability. Thusly outnumbered and taken by surprise, he obligingly and very slowly retrieves the taser and two pistols from his stolen belt. Then the shotgun goes off and he's suddenly drawing one of the pistols with lightning speed, prepared to squeeze off a shot of his own at Allison, but there is no need. She's down, as is her partner. Grimacing, he leaps forward to kick the weapons away from the undercover agents and secure their hands with the restraints from the chairs, casting a glance toward the shadows to see if he can discern any injuries.

The shadows dissipate along with a thump from inside them. That thump comes from the man that started the shadows as he stumbles backwacks and cracks his head against the wall. He took a good bit of that buckshot in the upper chest and shoulder. He leans there quite stunned for a long moment trying to get his breath back.

"…dammit…I /hate/ buckshot…"

And thank goodness for bodyarmor. He's going to have a hell of a bruise, but he isn't sporting any new holes at least. His voice is slightly ragged before he shakes his head. If that was a slug he would have been in /much/ worse shape.

"Are…are they down?"

"Eric!" Oh god. Oh god, is he dead? When she realizes the buckshots aren't fatal, and the fact that Eric came prepared for this excursion causes her to breathe a sigh in relief. "Don't do that to me," she cries, slamming a fist on his shoulder. Chances are, however, he isn't going to feel that. She shakes her hand out and takes a breath, glowering at the two sleeper agents in the car. Grabbing onto some of Eric's ties, she'll do the same to them like he did with Grif and his buddy. "We have to move," she tells him. "Start porting the people we unlocked out, I'll take care of these ones." She'll also start… well, rifling through their pockets. Chances are she won't find much, but she's mining the other side's people for what they're worth. Anything, to give to the people who can make this stop. Anything to help.

"They're down," confirms Namir. "Whatever was in that canister is neutralizing powers." The last word just sounds funny, both to him and in the way it comes out. It's a silly comic book term, but whatever. "You're all right?" Eric seems all right, at least.

"What do you know," Eric groans as he pushes himself off the wall. "You do really care." Then he oophs as she punches him though and shakes his head slightly. "It wasn't like I was /planning/ on getting shot!" He tosses back at her as he slowly shakes his head, holding that damaged shoulder as still as he can before he nods once towards the ex-SWAT. "They have a gas that does it. Hence he masks." He adds towards the man before he shakes his head once more time as if to clear it. "…right, I'll get who else is on the list." He adds towards Elena as he starts to move over towards the chained men and women. Trying to find the men and women that match with the pictures he's seen. Some of them are getting left. "Yeah. I'll be fine. Don't worry about me…and your powers should be back in a few hours."

Yes. Its a silly comic book term, but hey. Eric is silly comic book people.

It takes a bit for Eric to do it, but he works as quickly as he can. Moving two or three at a time. There isn't all that many really to move, most are the prisoners from Level 5 and both Elena and Eric had been warned about that. So he takes a few select people, and explains the why to Namir.

The rest though are taken to that small dip in the land to meet with Rafael and from there to a large delivery van that they all might be able to fit in…and from there they simply drive away. Not fast. Not slow. Just…casual…

…just like they are suposed to be there.

And away they go to parts unknown…to try to untangle this mess…and deliver the sad kidnapped guard to Elena's good friend.

And no.

The van doesn't look like a puma.

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