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Buddingtonite's question invited a response very different from the blatant lie Bischofite carefully prepared. He intended to explain away their operation as one sanctioned by Zinkenite, as a careful show of good faith following his failures in participating with Wolframite's plot to murder the Dark Mirror. He held ample evidence for it - Leto's presence in their affairs proved helpful to that small fleck of reassurance to his comrades. However, rather than delving into such efforts to keep his quickly unraveling plan in check, a wholly unrelated response surfaced in its place.

Laughter.

It started slowly, bubbling from his throat in restrained mirth until his shoulders visibly shook with the whistling, derisive laugh. A crooked grin peeled through his features, and Bischofite regarded his peer with dark amusement. "Our superiors..." Drawing in an audible breath, he wondered if he might possibly salvage this situation. Was there any way now? Already his high-strung nerves broke through carefully prepared plans, and Bischofite doubted that would be the only occurrence.

"Our superiors elected to place zat abomination in ze midst of our plans, Buddingtonite. Zey specifically ask-" Yet the sound of groaning metal wholly interrupted his response, and for good measure. So it seemed either the Strike Team failed to sabotage a simple elevator, or one of the senshi possessed magics to remedy that mechanical abomination.

Scheiß', he cursed inwardly. So this train wreck of a plan is proceeding at a worse clip than expected... Who thought they'd possess the ability to fix that damnable lift? We're not organized to head off an attack from the flank. Flood the elevator, and that leaves the stairs exposed... An assault on two sides. We're at a disadvantage. These racks... they're unmovable, even with our boosted strength. We lack the time to dig through boxes. I can't leave Malicious unprotected. Bischofite cringed; for once, he failed to scrape together a plan B.

"Serpentine, zere's no time to discuss; we can't afford to bicker about ze merits of a youma in our presence when our enemy is at our flank!" The grip on his chakrams tightened, and Bischofite felt a tremor run down his arm. Nerves knotted in his stomach. Failure hung in the air, tauntingly.

Lellouch is on the bottom floor

Lellouch watched the door idly as she listened to the noises around her, but from the people in the room, and whatever filtered down from the ceiling above. She passed slightly, never venturing far from her original spot. Some noises caught her attention, causing her to look up curiously, wondering just what in hell was going on up there.

Every now and then she'd send an equally curious glance towards the back where the three Generals spoke. She was mildly curious who the third General was as she did not recognize him, but what really had her curiosity was the was the freaking youma. What the ******** was she doing?

The corrupt was dragged from her thoughts when the sound of creaking metal caught her attention and she glanced towards the elevator shaft. Oh Well.. Time to get to work it seemed. Lellouch cast one last glance at the youma and the Generals before turning back around finally and facing the metal doors.

Cybele is heading to the second floor!

The lights had come back on, but things still didn’t feel right. Cybele wasn’t sure exactly what had gone on while she was talking to Cora, but the auras had rushed off again right after she’d picked up the magic pen and she’d hunted them without bothering to say the magic words. She was going to be stronger then, she knew, but right now she needed to stay close to everybody. Unfortunately, she’d gotten separated from the cat on the way to the warehouse. Hopefully Cora was staying safe like she’d promised.

She smelled the smoke when she was still a block away, and she thought she knew what she was getting into. There had been flames before, and a fight. That had been on a roof, too. This couldn’t be much worse. The jungle, however, was a surprise. All she could do for a few seconds was glance at the trees, half in shock, half looking for the Negaversers whose auras she could clearly feel.

This was fake, right? Powerful magic, but even so it was just an illusion. As a huntress, a jungle was actually sort of her element. Still, that did little to help with the other problems, especially the heat that was almost unbearable even from the entrance. Was it… coming from below? Anyway, she couldn’t just stand there, as a target for whoever was hiding. Another look around revealed a small group by an… elevator? Going down seemed like the best option, actually, and for Cybele, going deeper into a burning building was nothing compared to jumping off a burning roof.

She ran across the room, trying to step lightly as opposed to getting her feet burned. Unfortunately, the jungle was just too thick and strange to navigate with any kind of speed. The elevator went down a moment before she got to it. Luckily, there were stairs nearby. Those were probably safer than an elevator anyway, right? They seemed a bit cooler than the rest of building, too. She shifted her course to run down them without hesitation.

The dark Senshi watched as her ball of grime hit home, splattering Iris & Liryn, pushing back Astarte and generally making a mess of things. Oh how she liked to make a mess of things. She watched as more bodies entered the building felt the punches and magic flowing causing the atmosphere to sizzle with power....that or the smoke was starting to make her hallucinate. It was wonderful when something like smoke could make her powers stronger, she should have thing set on fire more often. There was no time for wondering about it now, she wanted to do damage before she had to get down to the bottom floor and to do that she need to grab herself a victim.

Sadly someone beat her too it.

The plank landed squarely in Atë's abdomen, the hard edge cutting in as the air she held was knocked unceremoniously from her mouth. A somewhat strangled groan escaped next and she staggered back from the blow, her hand clutching her waist as she bent double (luckily at just the right moment that Megrez had thrown the plate which rebounded of the nearest wall scattering jagged porcelain across the floor). She hadn't even had time to tense as the full force was taken by her stomach and for a split second she thought she was about to cough up blood. Instead she tried to get her breathing under control, her hair falling over her face as she looked back up from her crouched position to stare up at Acubens with a hint of excitement.

"Uhh, Oh hon-ey, if you wanted to...dance, you just had to...ask nicely." Atë voice came out in rasping breaths but she dropped her hands from around her stomach and began to walk towards Acubens, the fighting going on around her as the smoke grew thicker. Sh looked at the young girl like a hungry wolf, and a hint of a tongue showed as she licked her lips. She was going to enjoy hurting this one.

Or she would have done if very air hadn't ceased to exist. The little air she had going on in her lungs was now stolen away. Eye bulging she gasped for air, her lungs aching as she wavered, her hand groping at her chest and neck as she tried to breath. It seemed like an eternity before the pain subsided, the first breath sweet and satisfying, followed by another and another. She didnt know how long she had struggled against the power. Only that with Acubens attack followed up by Psyche's it hurt a dam well hurt. (Maybe a lot more than it should have done). Water escaped her eyes as she breathed deeply, the anger building up in the pit of her stomach as she gasped and heaved in lungfuls of air.

She. Was. Going. To. Tear. Them. APART!

She had already walked towards Acubens but the other Senshi posed more of a threat and the Eternal turned on her wedged heels and stalked back towards her, stepping into a run as she launched herself at Psyche in a glorified rugby tackle her scream cutting though the noise.

Megrez is on the first floor.

Drat, that plate missed. Ah, well, can't hit them in the face every time, Megrez thought to herself. Her attempt to pull out a second plate was interrupted by a piece of Ganymede's fabric hitting her; following what she saw everyone else doing, she tied the fabric around her nose and mouth. It was then that Astarte caught her arm, and she listened to what she had to say. "Lower ground... guess that means we're heading downstairs? It looks like someone got the elevator working, so we can jump in with them if we move fast." She was having trouble deciding whether to leave or not (if leaving was even an option); her self-preservation instinct was bumping up against her desire to get to the bottom of this matter (perhaps literally). If someone was coming with her, she would definitely go down there with them.

Avalon is on the third floor!

Persephone had herself handled, was Avalon's judgement of the matter. And Avalon had, in fact, noticed the smoke and the senshi sneaking into the lift; if anyone missed the screeching of the freight elevator, she didn't know what they were on and she wondered for their hearing. She looked out towards the entrance, and determined that while more senshi was coming, there was no tactical benefit to remaining on the top floor and melting, or suffocating, or otherwise dying. With that decision made, she vanished, reappearing on the bottom floor near the mesh door of the elevator.

Note to self, she thought: next time she decided to host an operation in a warehouse, she was going to ******** crash the ******** elevator. That'd be the first ******** thing she did. With her sword in hand, she tried to ignore the monster handling the energy she and the others had worked to collect. It had her on edge, but this was an operation, and Avalon did not want to make any more waves than she had to…

Gunn is on the first floor!

Leto had been, for much of their powered lives, trained by the same person that had trained Gunn; at the inception of the Dark Mirror Court, they had stood at the same rank, Super to Super. Now, Leto had become a Princess, while Gunn loitered as an Eternal. Big ******** deal. Power didn't make skill, and while both of them were heavily grounded in the techniques Ares had taught them, Gunn had what she thought of as a little extra. That little extra was fire, and actual military training. The first few attempts to throw Gunn did not go well. She caught herself on the floor the first time, but rocked back quickly, tightening her thigh-grip on Leto. But she heard a shout, and saw a basic-level Dark Mirror senshi rushing her. So the next time Leto bucked, Gunn went easily, rolling quickly and trusting the small amount of fire resistance the material of her cowl gave her to keep her from burning. She didn't go far, rolling into a crouch and lashing out, aiming to sweep Canopus's legs out from underneath her. The palms of her gloves were beginning to burn away, but nowhere near as fast as her skin would if she took them off. She ran the back of her palms under her watering eyes and coughed once before responding to Leto's stupid little joke.

"I would've died for her, until she betrayed everything we ever stood for. Every oath she ever swore, she broke. Maybe that doesn't mean anything to you, you never were part of the Blood Moon the way I was--but it means something to me." And it would continue to, as long as that whore walked around with Chaos twisting her heart. Gunn had known Ares far better than Leto had ever had. She had lived with Fallon, shared space, shared classes. Ares had been her friend. "Ares is dead to me, but you, you're going to be dead to everyone." Her attention shifted to the basic senshi, and in case the girl was feeling ignored: "And you, if you're smart, will get the s**t out of here. Because I have no problems with killing you, too."



Pirisite is on the first floor, heading down!

So, the little pink-haired lieutenant had ollied without even so much as a thank you, which was sort of usual for his interactions with girls. He'd had to deal with a crazy senshi by himself and now he was stuck in a warehouse that was going to go up in flames, watching for senshi with a pair of ********' binoculars. Didn't they have aura sensing abilities for this? When he was in charge of ops planning, he was firstly going to… to… okay, he didn't actually know how he'd improve on this other than having it not happen, but… he could see a little farther than he would've been able to otherwise…

When senshi began to arrive, he stayed on his high perch, because he didn't really have any kind of useful weapon and these were really powerful senshi. He watched one snare another lieutenant around the neck, and concluded he needed to get the s**t gone as smoke filtered up to his perch. Pirisite dropped to the ground, rushing for the stairs--and then there was a knight's fist heading straight for his face. He shouted unintelligibly as the fist made contact and dropped back a few steps, a hand held to his face. "Yo, ******** you!" He really didn't care for all this s**t, he just wanted to get out of here and find a ********' General that wasn't the redheaded b***h--but if this knight wanted to pick a fight with him, then Pirisite was all ******** for it.

So he returned the punch with interest, and said, "You idiot this place is on fire," and then charmingly hacked up some black s**t from his lungs before turning and making a beeline for the stairs.



Virgo is on the first floor, heading down!

She was… not exactly ready for this, but Chaos called and Virgo would answer. It'd been so long since she'd fought anything more complex than an undeserved demerit, though, or the strange monsters beginning to seed the Surrounding, that she didn't know if she would be up to it. At least she wasn't alone--there was Babylon at her back, incongruously holding a Starbucks cup. He was a good ally, and a strong one, and she wasn't particularly worried…

Well, so she told herself.

The warehouse was already burning, but the Chaotic signatures she could sense came from below. "If we follow the wall, we'll get to some sort of stairwell, I suppose," she said, taking her last few breaths of clean air. "I sense Lieutenants, and I doubt there is a room no one can access through human means below this." With that, she plunged into the thickening smoke and kept as low as she could until she found a stairwell with the door propped open. "Down we go. Did you see Gunn or--anyone?"

Strike Team.

Kyanite is on the second floor.

It was her job -- no, her duty. If her previous efforts were any sign, Kyanite planned to ratchet up her effectiveness with each sweeping stage. At the first, she had been useless. The second? A solid team member? And now, as they lay at the feet of looming victory? The purple eyes of the dark-skinnd teen flashed with glorious purpose. She believed, truly believed, that what they were doing mattered.

As she slopped gasoline across the ground at the signal, she imagined her cousin, Marthozite, beside her, helping guide her arms. "We can do this," she said to herself, forcing optimism. Her limbs vibrated with the thrill of it. She, Kyanite -- useless Kyanite -- was made into something greater when side by side with comrades. On patrol, she was no help beyond medical assistance. But here? Here she made sense.

When General Mica spoke, Kyanite nodded sharply. She liked taking orders. It made her life so much simpler. She could handle this -- just pour the accelerant. The gentle part of her that remained untainted balked at the idea of murder, but this was such an indirect means. So she did it without question, without hesitation, until the floor was ablaze.

Kyanite smiled at Kerberos and Cyllene, happy to work side by side with another.

The fire was lit and Kyanite backpedaled -- just as the whir of the elevator shook the floor. "They're coming," she said, eyebrows knitting together. Her knuckles twisted around her weapon, and the second the doors opened, she threw herself at a strangely familiar face: Sailor Cybele.

Kyanite ran at the other girl, aiming a flying kick for the center of her chest. "You are not welcome here!" she shouted, as if it would make a difference.

Babylon Knight is on the 1st Floor, heading down!

Babylon had gone looking for Gunn in all the usual places, like Europa had told him to, and found no sign of her. He'd seen signs of fighting, but nothing worth intervening in - until he ran into Virgo at Starbucks and decided to go looking together, and bring a drink for Gunn. Because if you were going to be fifteen minutes late to the battle, you'd might as well do it in style.

It was hot inside the warehouse. Babylon reached up and unclipped his cape from his shoulders, letting it fall to the ground. He was confident by now that it would reappear in perfect condition the next time he transformed, so he wasn't fussed by its loss.

"Good thought," he said, following Virgo along the wall, keeping low, where the air was a little clearer. "I see-" he scanned the warehouse. He saw Gunn, tangling with two Dark Mirror Senshi. She looked like she had the situation under control.

"I see Gunn, but I don't think she needs our help."

So much for bringing her an iced latte. It had been a dumb idea, anyway, considerate as it was.

He shot Neso a quick wave - he didn't know the senshi, but any friend of Virgo's was welcome company. "Babylon," he said, holding the starbucks cup out to him. "Here, clear your throat. We're heading downstairs." Into the fire, so to speak.