Welcome to Gaia! ::

Taym had already battled his way through the gale winds during what passed for a lull, half-jogging with his civilian jacket over his head and still arriving thorough damp. He shook himself off like a dog to the disgust of the portal techs on duty, and peered out into the rain as he tapped out a text to follow up the one he'd sent the night before.



He trusted Bix far more than he trusted Maebe, but there was no denying that the man was attention-grabbing, and although Taym planned on meeting exactly zero people, precautions were advisable. The more he could conceal, the better.

He double-checked the bag at his side: shorthand notes on location in vague code known only to himself (he was taking no risks, this time), the device he'd picked up from Mark. A runic torch in case things got hairy.

I really, he thought, need to get approved for bandages.

Taym himself was in apparently no hurry, loitering around the entrance under a scrap of shelter and smoking a cigarette, aiming his smoke out into the rain to avoid catching more dirty looks from the techs than he already had.

"Find a way in to a building, retrieve some things that civilians shouldn't have," he hesitated, "and dispose of them. Things got a little hairy last time, so I appreciate you coming, but for the love of God," he lowered his voice, "please let's don't assume anyone needs to get hurt unless they're coming at us first." Which wasn't the most confidence-instilling speech ever.

The comment about shanking someone in an alley was not met with the good humor that Bix probably expected. It got a flat, unimpressed stare instead, only slightly mollified by the term "Team Leader."

"Don't be too much of a pacifist," he said, burning off the rest of the cigarette in one long hit, resignation painted all over his face. "If they do come after us, do your thing. Just, you know. With compassion. They might be civilians." He stooped to put the cigarette out on the ground, to strip the butt down and stuff it into a pocket--all things Bix had seen him do before--and to give his supplies a final once-over. There would be no illicit cigarette stops on this trip. He'd been sheltering here long enough to mostly dry off, and after untucking the bottom of his jeans from his boots where he'd been protecting them from the sheet of water blanketing the island looked as normal as Bix did, and far more normal than he ever looked in uniform. He bundled a scarf around his neck, partly out of habit and partly out of the intolerance he had for the cold that would be waiting on the other side.

"Off we ********' go," he said lowly, as he stepped through the portal and into the frigid darkness on the other side, into an anonymous warren of industrial warehouses and the thick, dank smell of a nearby wharf. His breath immediately painted mist in the air, a shock after the warm island storm, and he paused to wait for Bix, head lifted to scan down the alleys with ears and eyes on full alert.

Taym commenced the SNEAKING.

He caught Bix's shoulder for just a second to lean in and to murmur at him: "It was dead last time. I guess the little blow-up has them on their toes. Remember: ******** non-lethal force if it comes to it, if you can manage it." He remembered Mina's appearance and delivered this instruction skeptically, but with a grim face of resignation.

Well, now at least one guard was on high alert, and Taym found himself faced with the troubling proposition of crossing a stretch of concrete now being actively monitored. At least the guy hadn't thought to signal anyone yet and was instead just sweeping a flashlight beam to and fro--one that Taym narrowly avoided, at the cost of more noise than he would have preferred.

Goddammit Bix. This is clearly your fault. Obviously.

SNEAKING: 2/4

Nothing for it. He pounced and cut the guard's shout of alert short with a skinny hand clapped hard over his mouth and with, more importantly, the cold edge of a blade to his throat. Self-preservation was a universal language. The guard went silent and whimpered, and Taym took advantage of his unresisting state to flip the knife and give him a solid crack upside the head with the hilt. He crumpled, and Taym tried not to think too hard about the fact that there was blood dripping down one of Fionnghal's antlers.

It didn't work as well as in the movies, where the guy went down with a well-placed smack. It took more damage than that, and Taym's arms weren't just a human's arms any more and he prayed that he'd inflicted nothing more serious than a concussion and the need for a couple of stitches.

Silence was priority number one: the second guard was more nimble than the first and apparently a lot more gung-ho about being a hero, and the simple act of shutting him up without getting his hand bitten prevented Taym from having his previous success.

He would blame Bix for this, later.

An elbow to the gut and Taym buckled and let him go instinctively, but recuperated before he had time to draw a weapon: he swung Fiona around like a baseball bat and caught him with the flat of the blade. It made a satisfyingly loud noise, Fiona protested, and in the same instant the guard crumpled.

Pausing, Taym caught his breath, desummoned--Fiona's runes a veritable beacon--and yanked a scrap of paper and a pen out of the bag he was carrying, jotting down two copies of the same note: Move and die. Speak and die. You will be retrieved. Which was all bullshit, of course, but he could only hope they didn't know that and he hadn't thought to bring anything to restrain them with and couldn't be sure they wouldn't wake up and cause a ruckus before he managed to do what he'd come to do. He tucked them into each unconscious man's hands before scrambling through the shadows of the stacks to catch up with Bix.

DMG: ok he's down