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Petrachkov was silent throughout the flight, letting his adrenaline build up. He'd need the reflexes; the Power Armor made a huge difference, but in the end it came down to him, and he knew he was capable - under the right circumstances. He'd armed himself before he'd arrived anyway, and was thus carrying his personal set of weapons, although he'd replaced the UMP with another archaic firearm - an AK74u, it appeared. Of course he'd gone to the trouble of attaching a reflex sight.

As soon as his feet hit the ground, he looked for concealment or cover. Trees might provide cover, concealment was all around. Bushes and undergrowth abounded, and he could use the AK here - not his M82. He dropped to his knees, but didn't yet activate his REF. That would be a dead giveaway, and he gave off no Unreality signature. He wanted to stay close to his companions, but he didn't want to be caught in an area of effect weapon aimed at them.

To that end, Petrachkov examined the forest nearby, trying to ascertain if there were any structures nearby, and failing that, any signs of life at all. Animals, anything - anything could be hostile here, and it was a dangerous balance between being spotted and seeing.

Petrachkov wanted to be the one to shoot first.

"If you see anything Unreal, tell me immediately," Petrachkov half-requested, half-ordered. Anyone with half a mind would recognize that there was no time for politeness.

“********. In. Finally.”

Pullman wore a wicked grin as he exited the shuttle and stepped out into the wild dark. At Petrachkov’s comment, he responded off-handedly; “You thinkin’ I’m gonna give you second thought out there, that’s what’s unreal, guy.”

He dug the cell phone out of his jacket pocket—greatcoat now left behind on the Dutchman along with his other belongings—not especially worried about being vulnerable thanks to the enchanments woven into his clothing (a perk of wealth). Pressing the single push button that would free Issaquah, he watched a form take substance from the blackness and the Demon-Minor promptly moved to hear its master’s orders.

“C’mon, Izzy,” Pullman said, brandishing his knives (also enchanted), “let’s go do evil things.”

“Are we evil, Andrew?” the silhouette-man asked. “Or are we all just… entities… little things… following predestined paths from which we cannot stray?”

Pullman frowned. “Don’t start with that s**t. You wanna hurt people or what?”

“Oh, yes, without a doubt,” Issaquah shook his nearly indistinct head, philosophy forgotten. “I’d especially like to burn them. Watch their faces boil and melt..."

“That’s the spirit!” Pullman nodded. He tossed a knife up in the air and caught it. “Me, I think I might cut a few off.”

“I should protect you, should I not?”

The Journeyman shrugged. “I guess. Have at it. Try not to wreck the suit, huh?”

Without another word, the Demon-Minor grew taller and wider, looming over Pullman until in one fell swoop, he engulfed the young man entirely. As quickly as he had expanded, Issaquah shrunk again until he perfectly outlined his master.

With a slight application of kinetics, Pullman levitated through the forest with Issaquah as a cloak. The forested area he left behind lay singed, the blades of grass glowing orange like the cherry of a cigarette.

Petrachkov reacted immediately, diving into the bushes. "We got a choice here, folks. We hide and we wait, or we fight them by whatever means necessary, or I deploy a buttload of this REF chaff s**t I've got and that kills them long enough for us to get out of here. I'm not making the final call on this one, I'm good no matter how we play it." The AK was prepped and the safety was off as Petrachkov trained the barrel on a zombie in preparation to tear it to pieces.

“********, of course they’d send us zombies,” Pullman grumbled beneath the Izzycloak. “Goddamn it, I want a go at someone who isn’t already dead. Better than nothing, I guess."

He turned to the others, taking great pains not to stab Petrachkov for his misplaced desire to inspire team spirit.

Christ, he actually said "folks." ********> folks. If he ever calls us "gang," I am cutting his throat.

"C’mon, less yakkin’, more hackin’.”

Catalena flattened herself against the tree and threw a shell of anti-awareness around herself: that is, anyone seeing her would simply pass over her form, not fully noticing her presence. In a whisper, she said, "I should be able to trace the necromancer back through his minions and deactivate them that way. If for some reason that is unsuccessful, Petrachkov can use his chaff. Prepare."

With that, she pinpointed the nearest zombie and tracked the location of the necromancer through it. From his control over them, she stung the extended sector of his mind with what was presumably enough force to disrupt his hold on the zombies and knock him cold, long enough they could run undetected.

If they fell, the team would move out. If not, she was ready to give Petrachkov the go.

"Oooh, this is good. Let them get closer together and I might - well, s**t, these guys are pretty close here. Alright, I'm popping chaff over on my side - I leave you guys to handle the ones over there." Petrachkov pulled the pin on the first REF grenade, then popped the spoon, counted a few seconds, and hurled it straight into the chest of a zombie, where it detonated and sent out a sparkling field of metallic particles. The nearby zombies, cut off from mana, would have to fall, and Petrachkov rose, AK prepared to eliminate whatever remained.

“What the—? ******** fell to the ground. Without Issaquah, he had only his knives left to take on the zombie horde. He pulled them out with fervor and then jumped back to his feet, running the opposite way of the fallen chaff grenade. He hurled both knives into the heads of a pair of zombies, before telekinetically reclaiming them, repeating the process with two new ones. At the same time, he used his telekinesis to shove other animated corpses out of his way, clearing a path for himself.

He continued like this, zigzagging through the legion of undead, taking them down with knives and manipulated momentum, until they were behind him. Ducking behind a tree, he took his cell phone out again and summoned back Issaquah.

“That little ********!” Pullman fumed in regards to Petrachkov. Izzy simply enveloped himself around his master once more.

“What now?” he asked.

Pullman thought a moment, then snickered. He whispered his plan to the Demon-Minor, who laughed in response.

“As you wish,” Issaquah said.

The others were much surprised when, all of a sudden, the entire zombie throng vanished, as if they’d fallen right into the shadow-thick ground at their decaying feet.

The others were even more surprised when the zombies reappeared, right on top of Petrachkov.

Ducking into the roots was absurdly easy, and the barrage of handgun ammo posed very little danger to Petrachkov's well-being. The bodies, contrary to being useless, were in fact a superb source of cover, from which Petrachkov decided to mount a return attack. Setting the AK on a decaying shoulder, Petrachkov drew a bead on the nearest zombie's skull and putting a round through it, then moving to the next and repeating. Once they all had no senses, it would work out. He'd deal with Pullman and Catalena soon enough. That had not been his plan. Oh well. It would work out.