The room was flawless, as if it had not been made by human hands so much as formed from the rock itself. The resources available to this organization were not just vast but also deep and skilled. The door in the ceiling which looked out into the watery tunnel was ten feet above him.

Approximately, thirty minutes later, the cell hummed a bit as the water in the tunnel was drained. The door opened and a ladder telescoped to the floor from outside it. A very shapely backside climbed down through it and eventually stepped onto the floor. She wore white overalls and had a air tank and breather on. She had obviously blimbed most of the ladder with the water in the tunnel. She also had a brown satchel over one shoulder. She removed the breather and smiled happily, "Greetings, Mr. Black Magic. My name is Peggy and I will be your liaison from now on. Loralei is quite busy at the moment. Anyway, here is your lunch. Hand delivery is a perk of the day, not to be expected." She pulled a pair of PB&J sandwiches in airtight plastic tupperware out of her satchel and a bottle of water as well as a box of those additive pouches also sealed in a tupperware. She held it up so he could see "Crystal Light Lemonade" written on the side, "A bit of a treat from my own stash, Mr. Black Magic, Sir." She handed the food over.

Peter gave her as charming a smile as he could muster, given the circumstances.

"Peggy? What a lovely name, like the majestic Pegasus of myth and legend. I was getting a bit hungry, so thank you for this and for the treat. If you don't mind my asking, as this is a new situation for me, how does this work? Do I eat the food, then someone says I've ingested a poison or some such and they will only give me the antidote if fill in the blank? I mean you are all being very nice, you fixed up my head and are feeding me, yet no one has asked any questions aside from my name. So I'm a bit curious about what to expect. After all, the news gives a much dimmer view of the Wave than what I'm currently seeing."
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 05:07, Tue 16 June 2015.

Peggy smiles and shakes her head, "I can taste test the sandwiches, but I am sure you would suspect I have built up a tolerance for whatever drug we are slipping you. Still, I assure you that the food is not laced with anything. Also, I named myself after Peggy Bundy, so cool it with the lines. As for what you expect of the Wave, maybe you got your information wrong? We are ruthless and efficient, but not evil. We hold life and civility to be important but not sacred. So, yeah, we kill folks and cause disaster occasionally, but all for a cause, yeah? As for you, you are being detained until such time as we can schedule you in for the more usual interrogations. Boss wants to do it himself. Until then, we intend for you to be comfortable. Better PR that way? Who knows."

She smiled and held out the food again.

Peter took the food, his smile never faltering.

"To be honest, I have never heard of the 'poisoned; work in trade for an antidote' thing ever being done outside of a movie or television show. I would suppose such is owed to the fact that even if such toxins existed in the world, they would either have to be a hard kept secret or brand new; otherwise, countries would all ready have formulated a cure in case an enemy used it against them such as giving it to someone high ranking in their government. Then there would be the problem that every person is different, so the poison may work faster in some and slower in others, possibly even kill a unlucky soul outright and fail to work on a rare person with natural immunity. Resorting to the use of something that cannot be always solidly counted on would be a sign of desperation, something I have seen no evidence of in the Wave as a whole.

"You said you strive for a cause; earlier I saw a man in New York City turn Central Park into a forest fire, people who could not run fast enough falling to their knees to choke on the smoke he created. It is a guess he was one of yours, however since the first time I fought him the person who spirited him away left a cell phone for me on which came a call from someone stating they spoke for Namadias, I suspect my aforementioned guess is right. Could you please tell me, Peggy, what cause he was fighting for? To prove he was stronger than unarmed men, women, and children? That he could use his Gift to terrorize those who had none? I am simply curious, my dear, as to what answer you might give."

Peggy shrugged, "Not all parts of the Wave are connected to one another. The individual you speak of... I do not known what cause he fights for. DO you think that he feels himself evil; do you think that he did not have some justification for his actions? It's so human to label things as good and evil, black and white, and not give it the nuance it deserves. Should that individual be pun... but, I am being told that I am speaking outside of my bounds. I am to ask after your comfort." The woman raised her eyebrow at Black Magic and seemed too calm.

Black Magic gave what he hoped was seen as a charming smile.

"Black and white? My dear lady, those are my two favorite colors. Speaking of which, I would like it if you could get me some cloths. Oh, I know you lot are busy with my attire, however I am sure you might be able to scare up something for me to wear, am I correct? At the very least, I would like to have pants on when I meet whomever is to formally question me."

The woman smirks and archs an eyebrow, "Unfortunately for you, clothes are not going to be allowed right now. We have a testimonial and some stolen CCTV footage of your fight n New York with another Namidian Agent and until we can as ertain the nature of your abilities, it would be inadvisable for us to provide clothes. The room's atmosphere is rigidly controlled though and any adjustment to the conditions can be made. If it helps, I am personally enjoying the circumstance greatly. You are an excellent human specimen."

Peggy the. Moved toward the exit and opened the door. It being in the ceiling made it tough for more than one person to access and he woukd notice that Peggy had to wait for the tunnel to drain again before she could open the door. The water drained very quickly and spoke to either a low volume or powerful pumps. Peggy them smiled and climbed out; was there a bit more wiggle than when she had entered? Before the door closed, he heard her shout back, "Since we assume you will count, it takes me thirty seconds to climb the ladder and another ten for the tunnel to flood. That is the window. Know, my employer will kill me to prevent your escape though. I will be back in five hours time exactly with your next meal and some medical staff,"

 Brian watched as truckers passed by the motel window. He closed the heavy drapery and turned back to the simple room. It featured a bed on a metallic frame on roller wheels, (no doubt to accommodate the needs of rowdy truckers and fishermen), as well as a seedy mattress with freshly made up laundry. He hadn't yet decided if he would use the bed, bugs were rampant in the east. Other than that, the room sported a TV with cable channels, a wifi connection, a bathroom and a simple nook for hanging clothes. Just because he was that kind of person, he confirmed, yes, there was in fact a copy of the King James bible in the top drawer of the single bedside table with a clock and lamp resting on it. The rotary phone that sat next to the clock was almost painful to see, and it wasn't even plugged in. Brian processed this in a moment and struggled to accept the details. They didn't matter, he told himself, moving on.

 He unfolded his suitcase and instead of clothes inside, he laid out his meta-suit and inspected it for holes, wear in the machined stitching, then finally he gave the command to cycle through it's current settings, including the climbing pads. It was in full working order as the suit shifted, from black, to see-through and then through the experimental infrared and UV blind settings. Meanwhile Johnny was running diagnostics on all of the computerized gear, it was prep time. Brian began to get dressed in the laid out suit.

 Brian was very interested in the old bunker that was reportedly used during the cold war. There was a paper trail of land-grabs and private companies making deliveries of some very expensive equipment to the old bunker's warehouse in the vicinity. Each of them a DoD contract of course. Meta's darknet sources confirmed that much. What he couldn't figure out was what was being done there, but it had to be related to the Gifted, since thirteen years ago the place lit up like a candle of activity in an otherwise dark room. He had to hand it to them, the operation was off the books and very hush hush. So details were scarce, if anything the area was a black hole of internet activity. A quick search of google business listings had already determined that about the outlying county, as opposed to the small burb of Gaultown proper, where there were around fifty business listings and when one actually pays attention, or just in the kind of way Brian could manage, a ring of these listings can be seen that surround a good twenty square miles of land just outside of the town, to make a literal blackout area, not even telephone service was paid for in that area.

 So after donning the suit, Brian switched it to see through with a thought into his sunglass interface, looking every bit the ray-ban variety. He'd have to carry the headgear and tools in his utility pack, which he changed to navy-blue to disguise it as a hiking-pack. He then dressed in his normal clothes and grabbed a wallet from his suitcase, it wasn't his actual information in the wallet, it was someone named Kory Logg, an ID he'd picked up online. His clothing was casual, for an outdoorsman. Finally, he put his suitcase under the bed and grabbed his canteen.

 He took a moment to look around the room and decided that he couldn't afford to leave anything but a receipt for the room, made out to Kory Logg's credit card, and set it on the bed.

 With that, he left and checked the locked door. He began began to head out of town, looking every bit the common hiker. He finished buttoning the top button on his flannel as he began making his way around the lake's nice dock fishing spots, heading for the 'dark zone'. Being mid evening, he was pretty sure no one would be looking for him as he saw many of the fishermen pulling their boats out of the lake for the day at each boat launch he passed. After about an hour he had causally made his way around the crescent shaped lake and began heading into unoccupied light forest and meadows. Periodically he silently checked with Johnny to make sure their encrypted connection to their black box was being maintained over the increasing distance. He had calculated well and aside from momentary interference here and there, there would be no interruptions on that front.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:36, Thu 30 July 2015.

It was eminently true that one of the things that Schwartze Augen was good at was being a secret. While most everyone knew about the Namidian Wave, only world governments' espionage services tended to know about Schwartze Augen. This was because one of the criterion to be recruited was that you did not seek glory or acknowledgement too much. Yes, the members internally vied and jockeyed and competed. Sure, they congratulated and celebrated, but they kept it internal. Most personnel lived on site, trained on site, and rarely left.

Too, the organization preferred a low public profile. Thus why it had worked so hard to keep its name from being known in Vegas, thus why they were international and yet unknown. They had a presence that could be detected if you knew to look for it, resources channeled, funneled, used, replaced, circulated; however, the actual organization itself was never seen outside of things like the Chicago fiasco. And even then, Schwartze Augen was happy for the Namidian Wave to have all the credit good or bad.

In Gualtown, the organization manifested as a subtle pattern. Not in what or how things were purchased as they had been extremely careful to arrange it to look natural. Various shell and dummy corporation, a few purchases by organization personnel, and even a few locals paid to hold titles. The pattern was in how a certain area of the city was utilized. Businesses were open and reported profits; the businesses had patrons as far as the internet was concerned. Yelp reviews of restaurants, websites for laundromats, an internet cafe with a very active node. But the pattern was there that it was all manufactured; simulating human behavior was very hard. Truthfully, if it had been anyone less capable than Meta, it would have been good enough.

Instead, as he moved around the 20 block area that had caught his attention, he saw a ghost town. People moved through the area but never stopped in it. A few gangs loitered in the area, but that was it. He was certain a few of the residences had squatters or... were they security personnel? The area had high security for one that seemed abandoned to waste. Security cameras of various makes and models on different buildings trying to look like they weren't coordinated, certain building having a bit better security than corner stores should, and even the occasional pass by an overly curious stranger. The neighborhood was locked down tightly, if you knew how to look. CIA spooks might not even catch it though. It was subtle and it was good. Brian had already been noted by security. He noticed as cameras began to track his behavior and more than one "pedestrian" shadowed him for a few seconds too long to be normal. Whoever this was, they were paranoid and on high alert for some reason.

Still, half an hour later, Brian would pinpoint three locations as the critical points for whatever was here: Tommie's, a local bar; Gaultown Laundromat, a 24hr selfservice laundry; and a Residence smack in the middle of the area.

---

Deep below the surface, the organization was in swarm mode as they prepped for the arrival of a severely damaged team as well as some guests. Black Magic's cell was eerily quiet but if he had counted it out, exactly five hours later the tunnel drained and Peggy came down again with a plate of pork fried rice and a bottle of lemon tea for Black Magic. She was accompanied by a man dressed in a white military style uniform and carrying a medipack. He was motioned to sit and wait for them, "If you please, dear, we need to give you a routine physical and collect some samples: blood, stool, urine, and hair."

 While he had originally come to the town to investigate the bunker he'd heard about, whatever was going on in town was imminently more interesting as Brian began to pick out the pattern emerging. Whatever was here was top level with hundreds, perhaps thousands of conspirators. The level of organization, he began to realize, was on par with any corporation he'd run across. If the truth were to be said out loud, he wasn't sure he could handle this level. He kept his cool though and controlled his rising anxiety. With a thought through his sunglasses he began to cycle through his imaging HUD, with Johnny-5's help, analyzing what it's sensors could pick up at the speed of thought.

 He almost admired what he was seeing unfold before him, some of the trees were even fake, giving off the wrong temperature signature, but only so slightly. No he did admire it, the artistry, they were likely antennae and security sensors. It seemed to match up with the level of security he'd seen in town. ~Boss, this is some ultraviolet level crap,~ came Johnny's voice in his head, ~they even have active jamming going on producing some momentary interruptions in our connection, we're cycling through the high bandwidth mind you, the kind usually reserved for smokejumper pilots and FEMA mind you, so yeah, we don't even want to be...~

 ~Johnny, lock down the chatter. EMF detectors are definitely par for this course."

 Brian looked up at the darkening purple sky pretending to judge if it was getting cold or not, casting some regularity to his actions. He then looked at his watch and began to head back to the Hotel. He hoped that his body language was putting off the "it's getting late" vibe.

 Tackling this issue would require help, help he didn't have yet, the two of them were no match for this level of paranoia and they'd likely get themselves killed or worse. No, he needed to learn more about this before he jumped in, as he walked he began to program a new trick for his suit, calibrating a setting for it's color shifting mesh to put out a human level infrared signature with suitable UV radiation to accompany it. He had some of the mesh fabric in his collapsed down RV and he would pick it up on his way back into the house. If he was right about everything, he would be visited tonight while he slept, but he wouldn't be asleep. No he would be waiting.

 As his current course began to unfold in his mind, he calculated a slim chance that he would be discovered before he could get out of town, and if he did, it would not go well for him he assumed. His only chance would be to get out from under the heel of this conspiracy to hide in plain sight, and if he played his cards right, he just might be able to walk away with some further information to boot. Were any of the fishermen really fishermen? At this point he doubted it.

 Brian stopped at his RV and when he fingerprinted the freezer drawer lock he withdrew his spare mesh he'd been prepping for any repairs he might need. The mesh worked so long as he had a nine volt hooked up to it. So he stuffed it into one of his reusable grocery sacks along with some cold chili from a can, his favorite, in a tupperware. He glanced at the magnets on the fridge as he packed, no change, that's good, none of them bothered to get into the RV yet. Moving casually, he made his way to his hotel room after locking the RV back up.

 Once inside, he quickly grabbed the mesh from his grocery sack and laid it out on the bed and tucked it into the sheets. He hoped it would be enough to fool any eyes peering into the room, as he sent it the calculations he'd worked on. The illusion he was going for was that of a sleeping person in the bed, of course upon closer inspection the illusion would quickly unravel...

 He then moved quickly into the bathroom and changed out of his clothes, and donned his headgear. With the suit now complete he activated his sensor blending pattern on his own suit, it would make him invisible to sensors and as it was now essentially active night camo, he would be harder to see with eyes as well. He breathed out a sigh, and opened the door and moved to sit under the clothes hanger 'closet' nook of his hotel room, after turning off the lights and turning on the tv, the sound low. With Johnny's silent help, the pair began to cycle through radio frequencies and transmission bandwidths trying to pick out patterns. As they picked out each pattern of the town they'd witnessed earlier, they began to build a simulation on the pocket-com, the real puzzle was understanding what was happening here. What could they be so paranoid about, what was it they were hiding? As he began to see the reality taking shape, he decided he had to try, he had to visit one of the locations he'd singled out tonight. He hoped he could pick out his target before his window passed.

As he began to make his decision, he decided that he needed to have a contingency plan, leverage. It would take time, but he could run some low level bandwidth transmissions over his cell line, roughly the same amount of bandwidth gmail used to check his inbox from a phone. As long as it was like that, it would go unnoticed he reasoned. It would just take a while to send out the megs of data he'd accumulated over the last hour, the connections had to be drawn to make it good leverage, otherwise no one would give any credence to the story. He sent the info to his darknet deaddrop and tasked Johnny with the contacting of every major newspaper in the country with the info, should the crap hit the fan. He would append more to it as he could, but until he made his move, that was all he could do...

The man before Peggy accepted his next me with a charming smile, yet she was unable to fully appreciate it as the steaming dish was pushed into her face. The plate also worked well as a discus, proven as it crashed into the medical technician's head and knocked him down. Peter was moving toward the ladder even before his improvised weapon had made contact, he was up in the tunnel before either of the pair down below had recovered their senses.

Peggy finished wiping pork out of her eyes and looked up, watching as the cell door was closed and water started to jet in to fill the passage; only something was wrong. The shaft was not flooding as it should, the cell was! The woman made her way to the door that was malfunctioning somehow, and noticed sticking out of the latch a wad of purple and tan; Vargus' lunch. He had jammed his peanut butter sandwichs, into the hole for the latch. She tried to push the hatch open to free the blockage and pursue the fleeing form above, yet the hydraulics trying to seal it were no match for her. She knew the remote command to shut the exit could not be canceled, it had been designed that way to either seal an inmate in the cell before they could get into the tunnel, crush them during the escape attempt, or allow the pass to flood and stop them that way. Since she was by far not the only expendable person working the detainment area, there was no kill switch nor cancel code; the egress would continue attempting to click into place until it did.

Peter had bought himself extra time with the sandwich trick alone, yet he was going to take all the advantages he could get; to that end, he was leaping up the slick ladder testing his luck until he reached his next obstacle. He had managed to cut Peggy's time in half thanks to those ballet classes his mother signed him up for (he needed to remember to send her a thank you card if he survived this), though he took no time to dwell on this. The next portal was above him, fully closed and unyielding. He looked around, and found what he sought; a small metal panel screwed into place. He had been banking on this, it was small yet a comfort to know he had guessed right. He figured he was either being held in a new state of the art facility, or an older one that had been modified. It was the latter, since the covered hole where an access pad of some sort had once been was right here to great him.

He looped one arm through the ladder and over the side, so he could work with both hands without fear of falling. He reached behind his head, and pulled his improvised screwdriver out from the band of his mask where he had had it tucked away; the tough and durable lid of the Tupperware container from lunch. It had been awkward, and taken a great deal of slight of hand and time to work it into place without arousing suspicion, yet since Peggy and the other man reacted with sheer surprise it looked as though he had succeeded with keeping his preparations quiet. He worked a corner of the tough plastic into a screw groove and started twisting to the left; the lid twisted as one might expect yet he kept at it applying pressure so his tool would not slip free. The give of the lid was reached, it refused to bend anymore and after what seemed an eternity the old screw started to move. He kept this up until he had the bit of metal to where he could finish unscrewing it by hand. He dropped the lid, favoring the flat metal top of the screw to use on the next groove. He removed number two, then three, the rushing sound under him signaling his extra time bought by letting the water fill the cell first was quickly coming to an end. He did not bother with the fourth corner of the panel, simply pushing the square of metal like it was on a hinge.

Inside was a mess of dated electronics, things one might have been able to purchase from a nineteen-eighties Radio Shack. Peter was on the software end of computers as opposed to hardware, yet a setup the age and nature of this one was easy to understand; the mechanism to open the door had no direct power source with this model of security device, instead a code was meant to be imputed which would form a connection between a live wire and the device thereby allowing the door to open. So, to get out of here before he took a crash course in how to grow gills, Vargus needed to identify the hot line and connect it directly to the one that would spring him from a very likely watery grave. Nice thing about these old school gadgets, they incorporated backup designs so if one part failed to function the whole unit was not shot. So, instead of needing to check each wire on both sides, the hero simply ripped all the others free save for two making those the ones he wanted. Now armed with the ones he had just removed, the unpowered Gifted used those to bridge the gap meant to be linked by a security code. There were some sparks, a little smoke, then the door forced itself open after receiving the ancient command. Water splashed on the man's feet as he pulled them out of the opening, the liquid killing the all ready damaged circuitry and allowing the hatch to respond to a remote command and seal itself once more.

As it did so, Black Magic looked back down into the depths he had just escaped. Down there now was his jailer, and he up here; their rolls reversed. She had a tank of air, if she shared it with the medic they could last for a while. At least until someone got them out, yet again since he had escaped on their watch maybe death by drowning would be less painful. He did not have interest in the woman's come-ons and flattery of his form, though that was not to say he wished her harm either. In fact, he had given fair warning shortly after he awoke in his former dwelling;



She told him the time he had to work with, gave his things that could be made into tools, and then left him alone for five hours with nothing to do but think. Black Magic was the Gifted super hero, yet Peter Vargus could manage a trick or two himself as well. The young man picked a direction to go in and went on the tips of his toes, attempting to remain silent and undetected by camera and man alike.

Dieter was reviewing the Chicago data again when a comm buzzed and he looked up. A green timer had started counting up and was on 23 seconds. His eyebrow rose and he clucked his tongue. He opened a channel, "Peggy, seems he managed with what you gave him the first time after all?"

"Sir, yes. The test of his ingenuity and creativity is begun. Redcap Lewis was a bit more than surprised by the attack, but his gear held up well. We are using the tank of air and have one hour's time."

Dieter clucked his tongue and grunted. There had not been any design flaws, escape hatches, or outs built into the cage for Peggy, so she would have to endure for a while. If they had left something like that in the room, the man would have found it and used it at best. At worst, he would have realized that they were testing him. Of course, it was a dangerous test. The man was loose inside his facility. A certain amount of risk and danger had to be assume on the part of Schwartze Augen forces to truly test what the person was capable of. Alternatively, if the man had not been able to escape within four hours, The Commander would have questioned him and then he would have likely been subject to exactly what Peggy was now, without the air tank. Dieter had no use for incompetent people.

"Attention, Project Acid Test is live. Team Spooky report to Sub-level B9."

---

Peter found him self in a crossroads. The walls of the tunnel were worked natural stone, so he was underground in a facility carved into bedrock. How far underground was a mystery still. He had gotten a taste of the water that flooded the tunnel though and that had been a clue; it was not clean but laden with minerals and impurities. It had been aquifer water, so the tunnel had probably been rigged to flood with water from the local table rather than any public works. Smart to keep such a use off the radar. Bad, because it meant he was deep down and nothing but floors of baddies above him. "Heh, Logan's run ain't got nothing on me. He thought as he looked around. Four corridors, or two depending on how you looked at it. each was identical with no doors or outlets. The ceiling was laced with metal tubing which had to conceal various utilities behind metal grating. Each corridor ended in a t-intersection and a quick jog demonstrated it was a wide circular layout. In the "south-west" section, for lack of a better term in this land devoid of direction, was a door and a mirror to this door in the northeast. Centered on each door was a camera. A quick scan of the floor showed that Peggy had used the south-west door five hours previous but there was no signs of how she had arrived this time.

If he walked along the floor and searched through the grating, it was all tubes except in one place where there appeared to be an emergency electrical panel and a small emergency kit next to it with a red cross on it. Next to that was a large flashlight. However, the only obvious entry to the area above the grating, while nearby, was severely rusted trap door that had warped shut.

 Meta had waited and none of the men who had been shadowing him had come into the room. Perhaps they had bought his acting and hasty illusion. He had seen a few shadows pass in front of the front window, but none had stopped to take any time. Security patrols at least, he timed them and they appeared with regularity every half hour, it had been three hours since he had started his waiting. He would make his move after the sixth patrol came by, which would be momentarily.

 Between Johnny and himself he had found a rather large spike in comm static, encryption of course. Though to crack the code would require hours, even with Johnny's help. The power of the signal static however could not be masked, there was a satellite communications dish somewhere nearby, one which communicated directly with the satellite, not like your usual passive receivers for directTV. It could never be picked up with anything short of an on the ground sensor system near the source of the communications dish, something that Meta's RV had as part of it's communications suite.

 So it was obvious to Meta that there were communications happening, but determining what was being said would be a feat too great at the moment, though in time he might be able to decipher it, he just didn't have the operating capacity currently to store all of those communications. He could however have Johnny begin to attempt a trace on the information by identifying the satellite above, and then hack it. That would occupy all of Johnny's current resources however and he would not be able to wait for him to try. Johnny was busy, so he'd be more or less on his own for a while.

 That was okay, Meta decided to head towards one of the three spots he identified earlier.

 The sixth shadow passed by the window, so he decided, now was the time.

 He quickly and quietly moved to the bathroom, listening for movement outback first, and then opened the tiny back window and wormed his way out, tuning his sensor HUD to pick up any vocalizations beyond his own hearing range and switched his viewer goggles on the mesh cowl to infrared so he could detect heat signatures. He double checked the efficiency of his own suit as he came to a soft padded landing in the back of the hotel. He found the suit to be working at peak efficiency currently, which meant that any quick look in his direction wouldn't register on any sensors or cameras, but he was not invisible, and it would only work as a rather expensive camouflage currently. He would crack the design on full invisibility if he could later, he was sure, he was close.

 So he made his way towards the 24-hour Laundry, through faux backyards almost all of them dusty and unused, and within minutes he found rooftops to gain and soon he was looking down on the Laundry. On his way he had noted several agents walking the streets, all in civilian gear but everyone of them with a bulge at their lower back or chests. Static monitoring revealed low level comms at work around each of them as well. In fact the first he noted was moving below him from the rooftop and the increase in comm static as well as some sub-vocalization had alerted him of the agent below. The agent had subvoc-ed, "clear on mainstreet...," that was the confirmation he needed. He was obviously reporting to security. He would isolate the frequency momentarily and begin the work of developing the key.

 He took a few minutes to wait and watch the laundry for movement, and cycled through the spectrum he was capable of seeing, watching for any clue as to what could be contained therein...
This message was last edited by the player at 20:15, Fri 31 July 2015.

A grey van rolled sedately through Gaultowns streets. With it's mud-spattered windowless body, unfunny bumpersticker, and a bored looking driver at the wheel there was little to distinguish it from the millions of similar workhorse vehicles that any number of American businesses depended upon. After circling a particular block of seemingly run-down buildings it pulled down into an open garage, the driver exited and closed the door behind him, an everyday action that was only suspicious insofar as the fact that the vans fresh heavy-duty run-flat tires were at odds with it's otherwise shabby appearance.

Once they were hidden from prying eyes the vans side and rear doors slid open and shut as six men disembarked. Five of them wore conventional military gear: Bulletproof vests, helmets, a belt of grenades, a sidearm, and an Assault rifle loaded with rubber bullets. The most distinctive among them also seemed to be the highest ranked; an overmuscled man with a lumberjacks beard and rough manner, despite his thuggish appearance more than a few opponents had suffered by underestimating his quick perception and sharp intellect.
"I don't see any Blackeyes, sir. Think they're sizing us up?"
The sixth figure stepped from the van, his expression was naturally furious and his distinctive greatcoat and high-peaked cap immediately marked him out as their leader. Despite his threatening appearance he talked mildly and seemed at ease with his current situation.
"Possibly, Orwell. Or they might be hanging back until they've confirmed that no-ones followed us. If it were me, I'd do both."
Namidian's didn't always see eye-to-eye, but that wasn't the reason for the current degree of caution; when a secret lair cost millions upon billions of dollars to establish and was rendered useless the nanosecond that it's location became known it was no wonder that men like Dieter and Brett were fastidiously wary with their security.

The man known to most as 'The Commander' circled the small garage once as he searched for whatever hidden camera Schwatrze Augen's technicians would be using to monitor him, which he found pressed against the pegboard hole of one of the garages tool-racks. His scowling face and intense eyes addressed the person on the other side of the system directly.
"Tell your Master not to keep me waiting. Or else I'll have no choice-"
Commander opened his coat to pull something from one of the many holsters adorning it's interior. Grenades, guns, tasers and knives were all visible.
"-but to open the bottle without him."
Instead of a weapon, Commander drew a bottle of Highland Single Malt Whiskey out from his jacket. He smirked insofar as his expression would allow.
"Tell him it's from that batch he likes. The pretentiously expensive kind."

Meta was casually slipping along the rooftops taking mental notes and a few occasional actual notes of the surroundings as he scanned the area. He was two rooftops away from the target building when Johnny-5, named after one of the greatest movie protagonists ever, alerted him to an anomaly. Brian had been monitoring personnel, cameras, and communications equipment naturally. Such was par for the course at it were. The problem was, and the reason this place put even CIA nests to shame, is that Dieter was hiding from ITSDA as well. Hiding from ITSDA and other Gifted meant thinking beyond the normal.

When gifted were capable of becoming insubstantial, invisible, or any other number of ways of being normally undetectable, your security measures had to go up a few levels. Thus, while Brian had not been looking, Johnny-5 had been. It was not burdened by the human normatives that even Brian's mile-a-minute brain was. IT had been using the sensor suites to monitor air flows, temperature patterns, dust, and so many other miniscules. As Brian was just about to jump across the gap from the abandoned hardware store to the abandoned liquor store which was next to the abandoned laundromat, Johnny-5 highlighted a threat on his HUD. Two pressure plates positioned exactly where Brian would have landed buried under the tarred roof. Johnny had only noticed it because the tar covering the plates was moderately newer than that surrounding it. A quick glance around showed that several more pressure plates could be detected. Johnny could not rule out undetectable plates. It also highlighted an airvent on the roof of the laundromat. There was no anomalous heat signature but the airflow in the vent was strange. Air was flowing in AND out. Johnny informed Brian there was a high probability that the laundromat was being watched by a chemical analyzer set to detect humans. NO matter how cool a head Brian had, he had been sitting in a cramped position for four hours followed by strenuous physical activity. He reeked; most security outfits did not bother smelling for intruders. Still, the rooftop analyzer would not function extremely well due to the unconfined nature of the area, but if there was one there, they were bound to be inside as well.

Lastly, Johnny also informed Brian that any closer and they would have bumbled into an echolocation array as well, set up in the laundromat somewhere. Now, how was he going to approach it without being seen?

---

Far away, Commander rolled into the garage and the van sat idly for a few seconds before a voice crackled, "One moment, please." Came a very, artificially friendly male voice. The roof of the garage opened and a red beam zipped across the room once, twice, three time, and a fourth. A panel popped open beside the pegboard and a digital readout of the personnel and armaments was listed. "Very good, sir. Proceed into the kitchen, through the pantry door, into the basement. You'll find the entrance in the deep freezer."

Doing so located a set of very frigid stairs that led down into a white room. Another set of red lines passed across the room and a whooshing sound indicated Dieter had extracted an air sample from the room as well. The man was thorough. If Commander had not been who he said he was or had not followed the rules, this would have been the last thing they saw. He wondered how Dieter killed them in this room idly even as a wall suddenly opened. A glance at the other walls was accompanied by wondering where they led.

This room was lushly appointed. Against one wall stood a squad of Dieter's Ghouls in their uniform glossy black armor and insect like helmets. They were armed much the same as Commander's men. A man in a tailored butler's outfit bowed low and offered Commander a tray, upon which was a box of the finest cigars Havana had to offer. "Just a moment, Dieter shall be with you momentarily."

How do we want to sync these? All at the same time: Black Magic's escape attempt, Commander arriving, and Meta snooping? I suggest all at the same time for fun and profit.

((OOC: I Like simultaneity. ^_^ ))

 ~Bah!~ He thought, on the bandwidth Johnny and he communicated on, it just also happened to be his normal level of conscious thought nowadays, he'd become so accustomed to his connection. ~Rookie mistake! Get yer head in the game Meta...~

 ~Okay,~ he said, making a mental sigh, ~I think so much about the energy signatures, I always forget about the physical sensors. Good job Johhny, you saved the operation and me. Thanks ol'buddy. Alright, lets go over options. A.) Trick the sensor. 'Cuz lets face it, I do reek, I just smelled myself, disgusting. To do that we need some cover up. B.) Overload to false positive throughout the network. That would take too much disruption, we don't want to blow anything up unless it's absolutely necessary, maybe some of these folks are innocent. C.) The Jessie Pinkman sub-routine. It was not a cool thing to do to someone as classy as these folks but it could in fact be done. This option sucks because it means I become an instant full-on-enemy of whoever this is. Not sure if we want to do that just yet. Lets scan for any good cover up... ~

 ~Boss, in the story of David and Goliath, it didn't work out so well for the guys that weren't David...~ Johnny intoned, ~Maybe we should cut our losses on this one, still too many unknowns.~

 ~I know Johnny, but they are definitely doing something with gifted people, the security confirms it. Sniffers, pressure plates on the rooftops, these people built a fake town to keep their secret. It's like that show Eureka, but instead everyone's a shadow government agent experimenting on my kind, whether it's to learn how to stop us or exploit us. It's the only thing it could be. You get why that's bad right?~

 ~I know, and I get it Boss. I'm just not loving the idea of going in there. We usually have at least a few weeks of research before we try something like this. I just don't like it and I don't want to die tonight.

 Meta made an internal sigh again, he knew that Johnny was right, but not only that, he cared about Johnny and he could hear that twinge and tone that makes him think that just maybe his friend had real feelings on the matter, he was insistent. ~Alright Johnny, we'll get out of here. I don't wanna die either. Just as soon as we can compromise the security channel...~

 ~Boss, dangit, alright. <Leveraging resources for decryption.> Then we're going right?

 ~Yep, I promise,~ he conveyed playfully, ~Lets go for a Gorbachev once we're in.~

 He pulled up the schematic for ol'Gorbie and tweaked it's source code a bit, the work was never done after all. It's design was relatively mediocre in threat level but it also held the most wins on record so far. So Meta puts it through compilation. About that time, the background noise he'd been getting began to take the shape of words and information. The moment full decryption of the rotating frequencied 'macro-channel' that the agent had been connected to was achieved, two fast and friendly probes tricked the systems connected to it into a microsecond of interference, the moment needed to get those probes in. Program forceps running smoothly and reporting software and hardware strengths and weaknesses. The tiny node it had taken over looked to the systems like a small fragged file, useless and therefore ignored except every ten cycles it demanded a change in it's position within the memory. When this happened, the system would read it, and allocate new memory to it, forgetting to erase the previous position in the process. So it began to grow, slowly, unnoticed like the creepy adware that highlights words on a page until it gets annoying. Well it just never did anything anyone would notice, so it continued to grow and explore, each copied memory space would house a new function. Within a few minutes it was grown to full size, a little over a few kilobytes and 'knew' the system it was inhabiting. Nothing was changed except it obeyed a pulse that could be conveyed over the radio channel, the pulse was beyond hearing range, so the agents would never notice and none of the information communicated over the radio signal would be displaced, it simply occupied a space on the radios slim bandwidth not being used. It was then that Meta sent a single pulsing message to the waiting programs.

 ~Mister Gorbachev, tear down those walls.~

 It was the order for Gorbie to sign a lil treaty with the system it inhabited. In exchange for running in the background, the system wouldn't crash, it was just another part of the antiviral operations, nothing to fear or get alarmed about.

 And so it began. The waiting programs in the nearest agent's comm gear began to spill their story, still slowly as it took a few full minutes to transmit the info, the central comm relay it was taking direction from began to report as well. The incontinent systems had no idea what was happening, the radio equipment was slow tonight, for a couple minutes at least and not overly. Brian and Johnny sorted the information as quickly as possible, software was blackmarket definitely, hybrids of recent DoD development, and what was definitely Namidian made, only a few humans could code on that level and they weren't likely to do it for sinister baddies like these, he knew two of them personally. The hardware was out of this world. There were even holographics involved, they were packed with data. Little was wasted here. Security itself was vast and complex. Layers of sensors all throughout the town and deep beneath it. They didn't have time to sift through everything coming in, it was too much, but he did notice a lot of attention being paid to someone in the depths. Uncontained was the word he found floating through the memory cache more often than other large words. Also an important looking man in a back-alley with several well armed men...47% of security was being focused on them, the most by a decent margin.

 Seconds pass.

 ~Okay, time to go.~

 Meta left the connection open, slowed it down, made it less noticeable. He and Johnny silently began to climb off the roof. Slowly, with absolute quiet he began to make his way back to the Hotel, he could do anything there that he could do here now and be in less danger he calculated. An hour passes as he painstakingly crosses the town one more time, back to the illusion of safety his room offered.

 ~There's a guy in there Boss...~

 ~I know Johnny. We can't do anything about that right now. These guys are black-ops legends. It's the Schwatrze Augen, and we can't take on an army by ourselves.~
This message was last edited by the player at 10:12, Sat 01 Aug 2015.

OOC: So long as no timing inconstancies come up I don't see any issue with it all kicking off at once.

The Commander declined the cigars with a polite wave of his hand, he appreciated the gesture but luxury was not something he often partook of- and rather than wait on one of the rooms lush pieces of furniture he took a place leaning against the wall and took a small tablet computer out of his coat and started reading through a set of documents. If he ever found a spare moment Commander filled it with work, and there was always something that needed his attention.
"Coffee would be great, though. Double Redeye. Black." He called out to the butler.

Commanders own men stood around the room uncomfortably as they tried to convey a sense of professional vigilance, without appearing to outright threaten their hosts- before the Butler could turn away to fix Commanders sleep substitute one of his men reached out to take a cigar from the offered tray, Orwell pulled the man back into line by the nape of his bodyarmor.
"Huxley, don't be an ass."
The squad leader dragged back a younger member of his squad, a brace of non-regulation kabar knives marked the undisciplined solider out from his peers. He spoke in a slight southern drawl.
"'Ahm jus' being a polite guest is all, boss."
Commander looked up from his tablet and shot the pair a withering glare that seemed to say 'really?' before he turned back to his reading.
"-Sorry, Commander."
"-Sorry Chief."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:41, Sat 01 Aug 2015.

Peter scouted the area as quickly and quietly as it was possible for him to do, figuring out in short order that he was in a maze of circular hallways All the doors he found were monitored by cameras, and evidence was present that one of the hatches had been used at some previous point; he also found a small maintenance area visible through a grated area, yet the only way to access it looked to be a badly rusted trapdoor. Vargus made his way to it, and slammed his body hard into the resistant though damaged metal. A couple of rust flakes drifted free after the first attempt, followed by a growing amount while the blockade began to groan and then screech  Finally, it gave enough to allow the man into the space beyond. The young man had to admit to himself that practicing ballet, stage magic, and fighting did its part to keep one's muscles toned. His shoulder was going to be sore for a while, yet it was nothing he could not live with. He was too distracted by his prizes to worry about such minor discomfort anyway.

The Gifted wasted no time in picking up and unscrewing the bottom, then keeping hold of the lid yet dropping the rest of the device in disinterest. Using his fingers, he worried the copper coil held there until it broke free. Next, he flipped open the emergeny kit and pulled out the tiny scissors. Instead of having some misplaced thought of using them as a weapon, instead the tech turned to the old iron door and chiseled until a piece of the metal had come free. He took his latest acquisition and wrapped the coil around it, then laid this down to once more return to the kit. This time, he took out a roll of gauze and rubber gloves, tearing the fabric and stuffing half into one of the pair and the other likewise. Finally, he opened the electrical panel.

Using the now padded gloves, Peter picked up his little makeshift device and placed the ends of the copper wire into live current. In the base, for just an instant, the camera feeds in his area flickered. Vargus removed his gadget, then applied it again. He had created an electromagnet, and thanks to the hefty power provided by the panel he was creating pulses that were interfering with wireless singles. He realized from tasting the water meant to drown him that he was not most like in or near a town, yet people liked to hike, fish, and take a GPS or cell phone with them. He could not be sure, yet if he was generating a strong enough pulse those devices would get faint interruption. Nothing of importance, unless attention was paid to the pattern he was using;

'DOT DOT DOT
DASH DASH DASH
DOT DOT DOT'

SOS

Peter knew a lot of things were against him for this to work, yet he not only knew he had to try something it had to be what was not expected of him. He had been willing to believe the food was a gesture meant to gain his cooperation, yet when he had gotten out of his cell such illusions faded. He had to be in some kind of prison wing or something, yet there was not a single guard to be found. Also, although he knew he had been monitored earlier there was no alarm sounding at his attempted escape. Then, he found needed items sealed away from him by a block that he clearly had the physical strength to overcome. He was skilled in making things seem a way they were not, and as such he could likewise tell when it was being done to him. Things to use, details he would need to escape, time to plan, now equipment just waiting for him. This was yelling 'set up' to him loud and clear. He was not going to give up his effort simply because it had been allowed him more than earned, yet he was now trying to do things in a way not foreseen and therefore not guarded against.

Dieter's hand paused as it rested on the door handle and he pulled out a touch device. A quick swipe of his thumb in a preset pattern that was long enough for the screen to read his prints and biosigns later and he was looking at an update.


Report>>>
Subject Obtained toolkit 1, cont.>>>
Signal sent through power grid>>>

Query?
Acceptable?
Yes           No


Dieter smiled and hit the green yes button then pocketed the device. He then twisted the handle and stepped into the room even as the butler was leaving. He paused the man and spoke quietly in German. The man nodded and left. Dieter strode through his own security and moved to the table where the cigars had been set and picked one up. he rolled it in his fingers a few times, cut the end off, and stuck it in the corner of his mouth without lighting it. Instead, he worried at the but with the tip of his tongue in a sort of nervous gesture. "Commander, you made excellent time. Unfortunately, the subject has entered phase two of containment earlier than expected. If you want, you can monitor?

Dieter didn't really wait for an answer, "Oh, did you get the up to date dossier? There is a Ethernet jack in the wall there and 7 100 foot lengths of cat-6 cable in the drawer in that endstand. Feel free to log on to the "Commander" network, password is... hmm, the exact date and time of our first meeting with the name of the city we met in the second time spaced out between the numbers evenly dash SA." Dieter grinned. No better way to verify identity than this. Commander was one of the few men who was as attention oriented as Dieter was after all. Dieter waited for the man to set up. He assumed they brought burner devices.

As they waited, the butler came back with a cup of dark, fantastic smelling coffee (definitely not Foldger's crystals) in a small pot with eight cups. He then gave Dieter a French press which the large man worked absently before pouring his own cup and adding considerable amounts of heavy cream. A tray of blueberry-lemon muffins was set down on a table in the center of the room and Dieter motioned to them.

Once the group had their internet access, WiFi was a strict and absolute nono down here and the wired cable was dedicated to this facility. They had access to a video stream of Black Magics containment facility live as well as archive footage of his captivity. "The man in question is in detainment facility Durin under the Lake. You and your team will be ceded temporary access to and control of the facility. Proceed as you wish. Questions?"

---

Back at the hotel, as Birna approached, Johnny spoke again, "No, not in the facility, though that IS a concern. I meant in the room."

Sure enough, the light in his motel room was on. Whoever it had broken in was either a rank amateur or didn't care that Brian knew. "Also, I have detected a strange anomaly in the communications network I am monitoring. It is fluctuating microscopically at the power level in a pattern indicative of an "SOS" message in Morse Code. I can, if you like, send a sort of response, but it would have a high probability of dsiclosing that someone is monitoring the network.

 Brian almost snorted, but didn't want to give away his position. He had made it back to the bathroom window when Johnny alerted him to the presence of an intruder. ~Crap,~ he thought, ~easy enough. Johnny, we'll send a message back to the trapped guy in a minute. First, we have to get that person out of there. Where's my squirt gun...Ah yes, back in the RV. Perfect.~

 The first thing that he needed to do was to get to the RV and his squirt-gun. Everyone he showed the gun to was always laughing at him, but he knew it was the most effective way of dealing with unwanted visitors. So as he wound his way, taking his time and carefully picking hiding places, he noticed movement within the hotel room and it bothered him. A headlamp or flashlight was being flashed around and it didn't seem particularly friendly, he was being either robbed or setup, but that was not his primary concern at the moment.

 He palmed the lock on the the door to the RV and clicked it open carefully, with as little noise as possible and slipped in, moving the door to click closed gently behind him. In it's collapsed state, it was not a comfortable fit. He crawled to the fridge opening it and thumbed the drawer lock, and instead of delicious cheeses and veggies in the drawer, there was a compartment with several vials of bluish juice and a squirt-gun. He quickly emptied the contents of one vial into the gun and making sure there were no leaks in it, put it into his pocket along with another shatter proof vial. No, better to make that two more vials, just in case.

 He then carefully got out of the vehicle. Careful to listen for noises which might come from outside, indicators that he would need to stay inside. He checked his internal time, ~crap, another pass of the guard due any moment,~ he waited. One minute, then two, he heard muffled footsteps as one of the agents approached. Then stop, and begin to converse in low tones with the person within his room. They had found him out and Brian had been correct, they just waited much longer than he thought. He needed to act fast if he was to save his bacon...

 Using the sophisticated channel he had accessed earlier, the one that all the security seemed to be on. He quickly accessed his voice modulator program and began to make adjustments, to mimic a manly voice, this one would have a German accent. He spoke with thoughts into his interface and pocket terminal and what emerged over the radio was the German voice. His mind flew as he thought of the mapping system they had used for coverage, "Contact by the lake. Shit, the guest's a late night skinny-dipper, sector six."

 The agents outside stopped their conversation, "Copy, Gambit-1 moving to you," one of them sub-vocalized. The other one actually spoke in low tones to Gambit-1, "Just in case you lose him, I'll wait outside."

 The Gambit-1 moved off, and the second agent remained. This would be easier to accomplish. Brian slowly crept from the RV. Luckily, there were other vehicles parked around to make it seem like a hopping place, or maybe there were some other guests here. Whatever the case, he knew that this was just what he needed. He internally flicked his suit to try reactive camo, and as long as he didn't move beneath those street lights, he'd be pretty tough to see, even for a trained eye.

 Meta began to slide from car to truck to car, conscious of his shadow even in the moonlit parking lot. He circled where he thought the agent was and stopped as he got closer to reassess, he didn't want to pop out only to have the agent take him from behind because of an assumed position. There, a boot moving on the pavement. He zeroed in. Then he came up behind the agent, squirtgun in hand and said quietly, "S'cuse me, got a light?"

 The man turned expecting something completely different from what he saw. The man was dressed in street clothes which was exactly what was required for the squirt-gun, "Shhhhurrrr?..., " he started to say seeing Meta's masked face as he shot him in the eye with a squirt, it took mere moments for the juice to begin to take effect.

 The breadth and width of Brian's knowledge of neurology and materials science was pretty astounding. So it was that he had come upon the sleep inducing toxin he named, FADEAWAY. It was super fast acting by greasing the neurons of the skin, and as long as skin was indeed present, absorption was fast. The man began to crumple before he even finished his sentence, he might not even remember what happened, he couldn't be sure though, brain hacking was hard if you didn't want to hurt someone and he didn't want to kill this man. Brian caught the man before he hit the pavement and began to drag him into the open room. He put him into the bathtub and squirted him again. It would last a good two hours he calculated...

 From there it was a quick grab of his suitcase, stuffing his material into it. He cursed that the man had found it and moved it, but he hoped it would not be the main thrust of his report. He closed up the room and cleaned the room of any prints he might've left, he couldn't be as thorough as he'd like but time was of the essence now. He quickly headed for the RV and packed up. Agent Gambit-1 would not take long to figure out he'd been had, he had one chance to help the guy within the compound and it wouldn't be over the SOS interference.

 Meta dived into the security system and initiated Gorbachev's disarmament protocol. If they had some higher than average technicians and he suspected they did, they would be able to get security up and running again within half an hour to an hour. Until then, Gorbie would throw false positives around the system sensors and disrupt communications and monitoring devices, even lights might flicker. He was careful not to leave his calling card anywhere in the system, because they would really hate him after this, but it was the only way...

 ~Alright Johnny, we've got to get out of here or we are dead meat.~

 He hopped into his truck and began to pull out of town.

Edit: I'm done editting, caught a couple weird errors. I'm a perfectionist like that.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:27, Wed 05 Aug 2015.

The Commander found the cables in the drawer indicated. He made a point of ejecting the tablets memory card before connecting one end of cat-6 and dropping the remaining cable by one of the rooms wall ports. As he walked to join Dieter in the centre of the room Orwell stooped to plug it into place.

"Dieter, a pleasure to see you again- it's really has been too long."
Commander placed the unopened bottle of whiskey he'd bought on the table and immediately forgot about it as he dug his teeth into real work, namely deciphering the ridiculous password Schwatrze Augen had assigned him. After a few moments of furious typing his tablet flashed into life and connected to Dieters network, the automatic security software on The Commanders device and Dieters system had a brief battle for supremacy before the networked supercomputers finally outthought his laptops core into submission; the tablets screen lagged briefly as it's system was scanned, it's operating system partially overwritten, and finally allowed access.
"Your security admin doesn't fuck around." Commander observed with a tutt of irritation. "-and judging from the files you've given me, neither do your prisoners."

Commander played the jailtime footage on a looped hundred-times fast forward as he prepared a mug of rich coffee for himself. The video image of Peter Vargus moved around the screen jerkily as he shifted out of unconsciousness, paced his cell hurriedly, frantically conversed with his jailor, waited, and executed his escape in a handful of frames before the video looped again. Commander watched the loop run it's course a few times more before switching to the second set of files: the set of live camera feeds of Peter's current escape attempt.
"He's skilled. I'm impressed that he's gotten this far without using his abilities." Commander concluded.
He blew steam from his mug as he watched the man closely. Not only had Peter escaped his cell, but he'd done so without killing any of his jailers, had realized that even after his 'escape' that he was being toyed with, and had taken steps to upset Dieters game. From a tactical perspective the man had performed flawlessly and his only mistake had been to get caught in the first place, unfortunately that single slip-up was enough to guarantee his fate.

Commander pushed his computer away and gave Dieter his full attention. He'd gathered enough information to draft his plans, and now he intended to implement them.
"Before I begin I have several questions. Firstly, what information do you want me to extract from this man? I can discover his identity, of course, but if you have any specific requests I'm sure that he can oblige you."
Commander stood up and started checking his weapons, and his men took it as their cue to fall into position behind him.
"Secondly, I do my best work with a captive audience. I trust that you'll have no objections if I end your wargame prematurely?"
The Commander clicked open the breach of his M320 grenade launcher and checked that it was loaded. Against the barely-armed prisoner the weapon seemed excessive, but in the years that Dieter had worked with The Commander neither had known the other to underestimate a foe.
"Finally, what are your 'ultimate' plans for the man? You already know that I don't do executions, so I assume that you'll want him in one piece for a while longer."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:43, Wed 05 Aug 2015.

Dieter didn't respond to Commander's various declarations about Dieter's organization. They weren't comments meant for answer; they were compliments from one professional to another. Dieter had always liked Commander: he was reliable, professional, and extremely skilled. As Namidian Villains went, he was stable and level-headed. He was on a very short list of fellow lieutenants Dieter would ever allow into his locations like this. Commander knew this and knew it was a vote of confidence from Dieter, as well as a compliment.

"Of course I don't want you to kill him. If I only wanted him dead, I have men who can do that. I could have drowned him in that room if I wanted. No, what I want is to see his suite of powers in action for our records. Ideally, recruitment would be a nice end result. I would also like to know what, if anything, he knows of ITSDA. He may have been approached by them already... They irked me today and I would like to return the favor."

Dieter sipped his coffee and was about to answer the man's second question when his tablet device went haywire and he drew it from his pocket to frown down at it. He sat p straighter as he read about something hay wire going on in base systems. He growled: someone very skilled had just hacked them. "We have another player on the field... I will deal with this. Base communications are going to be problematic, but your shortwaves should work fine as long as their isn't too much concrete. Durin facility is accessible via analog methods and I turn over control of the operations in that area to you. Open file 'Champoiseau' and enter password 'Winged Victor.' It will give your operations manager 24 hour access to the During Facilities' schematics, network, and interfaces. Acceptable?"

---

Deep underground, the power flickered and the lights went off and on in a very distinct, repeating pattern. If Black Magic could see it, then so could his captors. But that hardly mattered. Was it part of their plan or a signal of real aid. Only time would tell on that account, but shortly after the flickering, the lights went out and emergency power lights came on. A siren was sounding somewhere. It didn't feel like a setup; it felt like aid unlooked for.

The Commander cocked an eyebrow as Dieters systems misbehaved, and the man himself showed a rare sign of distress. Men in high-risk professions such as Dieter, Commander, and most other highly placed Namidians, were no strangers to the unexpected- but Brett respected the fact that Dieter was powerful in every sense of the word, and the fact that something had taken him by surprise was not something that should be lightly overlooked.
"Acceptable." He confirmed, with regards to the Command he'd been given over the prisoners facilities. "Expect your information within two hours."

Forewarned of the security breach The Commander opened his computers developer tools and manually checked his system- nothing seemed immediately compromised but that meant nothing if the digital intruder was as skilled as current evidence suggested. Commander was confident that his own security measures and network of obfuscation would deliver the 'Champoiseau' package to his own servers without letting so much as a byte of unsolicited code through, but here and now the distraction would be a problem.
"If this 'player' situation develops further I'd like to be informed- Otherwise, happy hunting."
The Commander and his troops strode through the door he'd seen Dieter enter from and made their own way to the Durin facility by foot without another word. He had an objective and a worthy foe laid out infront of him and rather than waste time with a formal exit he, as always, chose to get right to business.

---

Durin was controlled by a simple monitor room, or at least a monitor room that was simple in comparison to the Commanders multi-purpose nerve centre- for the purposes of monitoring a single facility that currently only seemed to host a single prisoner it was more than adequate, and like the rest of Dieter Sievold's property the room surpassed every need it's owner could require with meticulous efficiency.
Brett took his natural place infront of the rooms main bank of CCTV monitors and control panels, and after a few experimental keypresses he spun on his heel to face his squad and regarded them with a beaming grin.
"Right. Let's get this party started!" He took a metallic object off the consoles desk and pointed it directly at the the unruly soldier who'd embarrassed him earlier. "Huxley, here's a manual override key for the cellblocks west entrance. Subdue the target without killing him."
"Eh? Just me, Chief?" Huxley regarded his Commander with shock, before his expression hardened- even if the command was suspicious he'd obey it.
"Yes, just you." Commander didn't mind his soldiers questioning his orders, so long as they were followed to the letter. "I need a new Lieutenant to take over the ZeroComets. Consider this your aptitude test."
"Sir!" The solider narrowed his eyes at the bank of CCTV outputs as he gave Peter a predatory glare. "Consider it done."

Through the closed circuit monitors Commander and his remaining men could see Huxley use the key to manually pull open and re-lock the secure vault doors leading into the heart of prison Durin. The Commander was still grinning to himself as he watched over both Peter and Huxley with unblinking eyes.
Orwell narrowed his eyes as he finally concluded why The Commander was taking the unnecessary risk of sending just one man. "You're expecting Huxley to fail, aren't you?"
"I'm counting on it." Commander admitted. "Unless our prisoner uses his abilities Huxley will easily overpower him; and we'll know that there's a reason why he seems to be holding back. Conversely, if Huxley is defeated we'll be able to gather the data that Mister Sievold requested."
The sternfaced Namidian smiled to the CCTV outputs. Dieter wasn't the only one who enjoyed wargames, and although The Commander justified his risky plan under the guise of 'data collection' the truth was that he was curious to see just how resourceful the flamboyant vigilante truly was.

OOC: Planning to do a battle post next. If you're satisfied with the current scenario, that is.

With the Commander on the job assigned there and the matter of the hacker who infiltrated his systems turned over to competent contractor, Dieter was feeling better. He never felt good; he never felt secure. That as what kept him in business. He nodded a quick, efficient affirmative to Commander's requestto be updated and set orders for his own operations specialists, Gates' point of contact, to keep the Operations specialist working with Commander in the loop concerning both the acquisition of the satteltie feeds Commander requested as payment as well as any updates concerning the Rogue Operator in his system.

He then removed himself to his private lab gain and set to doing his work at this location. He kept a close monitor of the evolving situations but took no action for now. He did make a few phones calls, left a few messages, then checked the location of a few notable operatives as he went.

Huxley pulled open the heavy vaultlike door that lead into the west aisle of Prison Durin and carefully pulled it shut behind him where it locked shut with a heavy automatic *thunk* of titanium deadbolts. With electronic systems potentially compromised The Commander had entrusted Huxley with a metal security key that he wore on a chain around his neck and tucked under his bulletproof vest- which could be used to manually force open the prisons sealed entrance. If the facility entered lockdown the key would be useless, but for the time being the small piece of metal represented the only means for either Huxley or his prey to escape.

As the soldier paced the prisons circular outer ring in a full circuit he began to feel his impatience flare up. Once or twice he attempted to radio his Commander for a conformation of the prisoners location but he was only offered static noise as a response; either the concrete was thick enough to disrupt his shortwave radio, or one of the conditions of Commanders 'test' was to make his job harder than necessary- he wasn't fully certain which. He completed another circuit of the complex and his impatience turned to anger; the hallways weren't that long! Where the hell was Peter hiding!

Before he could dwell on the subject any longer something pricked the edge of his hearing, there was a slight scrape of metal on metal coming from the section of corridor behind him! As he sprinted back the way he'd come he ducked under a panel of rusted metal grating that he'd missed on his patrol, and hunched over the west doors keyhole he finally found Peter Vargus franticly working an improvised metal tool into the doors mechanism as he tried to force the lock open.

"Howdy, bud!" Huxley called out brightly, a satisfied smirk etched across his face as he saw a look of panic flash across the prisoners eyes.
"I shouldn't try that if ah' were you." he slapped a hand over the section of armour where his key was concealed. "Without tha' key it jus' takes one false move for tha' door to lock down tighter than tha' skin on ah' grape."
Huxley drew his Kabar knives from their sheathes with a pair of long deliberate scrapes. His target had been clever to avoid him for this long, and had even had the ingenuity to try to force a way through the one path out of the prison that wasn't locked down, but now that he'd been cornered it was time for the soldier to vent the frustration that'd been building throughout his short game of cat and mouse. The two heavy knives spun in Huxleys palms and sung in the air as he performed a complicated series of flourishes designed to intimidate and impress. "Ah'm gonna' hurt you, now. Y'h should have stayed in your cell."
"My dear man." The prisoner spoke with airs that seemed oddly out of place when paired with his unclothed body and unfortunate situation. "Just because your jailers had the better of me for a few short hours, and that I chose to make my escape through stealth and not through force, do not presume that I'm of little threat. Rather, putting hooligans such as yourself in their place has become a hobby of mine." To Huxley's surprise the under-armed and thoroughly underfavored prisoner raises his fists as though preparing to spar. Two knives in the hands of a skilled master against the bare fists of a fugitive gifted with no apparent abilities was not an even match, and Huxley recognised the false bluster for what it was.
"Whatever you say, bud."
Unable to contain a trace of excitement from his voice the psychopath sprang forward to do battle without so much as another moments hesitation.

As Huxley dived forward he danced his knives between his fingers to strike Vargus with the butt of his handles; his mission, after all, was still to take the man alive. Both his arms snapped forward in a shockingly fast whiplash designed to crush both of Vargus's temples and end the fight in a single strike, but before the attack could connect the prisoner pushed his weight off his front foot and darted back a step to safety. As both a dancer and a staff-fighter Vargus was no slouch when it came to footwork, and he managed to avoid Huxleys follow-through and redoublment attacks by ceding yet more ground but at his fourth step Vargus felt his back press into the still-sealed prison exit and realised that he had nowhere left to run, as the point of his enemies knives slashed a thin wound across his chest he realised that he only had an instant to act, and with no other option he pushed his weight forward and attempted to land a punch against his assailant. Vargus drove one fist high to divert Huxleys attention and jabbed the other below his vision in an underhanded gutpunch that was only rewarded with a mild grunt of discomfort as his fist impacted harmlessly against Huxleys bulletproofed vest.
"Unf! Right! Ah' was trying to go easy on y'h!" the attack seemed to annoy the soldier rather than injure him.
Before Vargus had a chance to press his assault the soldier kicked him backwards with a stomp of his heel, raised his rifle, and pulled the trigger. The movement was a single efficiently drilled CQB technique and Vargus had less time than concious thought could provide to respond to the attack.
*BLAMNN!*
The gunshot echoed down the hall with a deafening ring, and in the comparativly stark silence that followed both men stared at each other with a look of equal shock.
Vargus had caught Huxleys 'less-lethal' rubber bullet between his teeth.
"...Tha' fuck?!" Huxley managed.
"M' dea' m'n. Tha's Neva'h 'appen'd 'efore." Vargus mumbled around clenched teeth, his expression just as surprised as his foes. He'd never managed to perform an 'actual' trick without his costume before.

Amidst the shocked silence Peter took the initiative and dived for Huxleys throat and as the two wrestled they exchanged a furious set of punches, kicks and grapples that would decide the battle once and for all. Peter had a few years of practice as a vigilante, but none of that experience compared against the regime of strict combat training that the Soldier had endured under The Commanders leadership. Peters choke attempt was met with a knee driven into his groin, and his attempt to wrestle Huxley to the ground was met with a loaded punch that left the magician with blood gushing from his nose, a final attempted kick into Huxleys side was countered by a roundhouse that left Peter staggering back beaten, bloody and winded.
"Hah! Ha, ha, haa!" As the severely injured magician stumbled back from the uninjured solider he started to laugh.
"My dear man, I really must thank you for being such a terrific assistant -unfortunately I must begone now. Mayhaps we will meet again, but for now it's adieu and orevwa!"
Huxley tilted his head and regarded Black Magic with a confused grimace. "You're full of y'hself all of ah' sudden, did ah' hit y'h too hard on tha' head? Just because y'h managed one little trick doesn't mean y'h suddenly stand a chance."
"On the contrary! 'One little trick' is all that it should ever take to leave a crowd breathless!-" The magician enthused, even undressed and with blood pouring from his busted nose it felt as though something had changed in the desperate prisoner, and Huxley suddenly felt a pang of fear that the man wasn't merely bluffing. "-and you've fallen for the oldest trick in the book! Classic misdirection!" Peter raised the hand that he'd tried to wrestle Huxley to the ground with and opened his palm dramatically, every one of Peters fingers had a grenade pull-ring wrapped around it.
Huxley barely had a moment to realise his mistake, desperately try to unfasten his bandoleer of grenades and cry out in enraged panic before he exploded with a quintuple explosion of teargas, flashbang and smoke grenades.

When the chaotic detonations finally subsided Vargus found the Namidian passed out and utterly incapacitated inside a rapidly dispersing cloud of red smoke and eyewatering lacrymatortic vapour, with held breath he quickly relived the unconscious body of it's manual override key and assault rifle.
"Your fateful mistake was not in attempting to take me alive..." Peter spoke down to his bested enemy. "Nor was it in underestimating my ingenuity..." He inserted the key into the door, and with a heavy twist and heave of muscles the six-inch thick reinforced door to freedom began to lever open. "Simply, you lost because you lack flair! If you have the commitment to face peril you may as well face it with a grin, nay?"
"Nay!"
The heavy metal door that Vargus had been struggling to pull open suddenly exploded outward with an irresistible force that tore him off his feet and sent him sprawling to the ground, he quickly tried to find his feet but before he could budge a muscle he heard the distinctive clicking of weapon safeties being disengaged. Four armed men and their impressively dressed leader stepped through the exit he'd opened and levelled the merciless barrels of their weapons at his helpless form.
"There's a time and a place for dramatics, I will admit-" The figure that was talking was the most distinctive of the soldiers that'd ambushed him and Peter supposed that he was their leader, their Commander. "-but as a tactic I far prefer 'OVERWHELMING FIREPOWER'! Cover your throat and eyes!"
As the mans voice shifted in pitch Vargus suddenly felt part of his subconscious turn blank and his hands clamp protectively over his face and neck unbidden, before he could bring them back under his control or even realize what had happened his world exploded into pain, confusion and noise. The last thing he heard was the rattle of four assault rifles and the last thing he felt was the sharp agony of several dozen rubber bullets smash into his unprotected flesh before he finally succumbed to blissful, numb, unconsciousness.

---

Peter drifted back into conciousness with sluggish disoriented steps as his senses returned one by one. He could feel burning points of pain across his head, arms and chest that felt as though he'd been worked over by a tack hammer. He knew that he was in agony but it somehow seemed distant and subdued as though his body had numbed it's own senses in self preservaion, but as he tried to flex his muscles the damage he'd suffered made itself known and persuaded him not to push his luck. His back dully reported that he was sprawled out on the cold prison floor and that a heavy pressure was pushing down on his ribcage.
His eyes opened to stare down the needled Barrel of Commanders tasergun, the Namidian Lieutenant's boot was standing on his ribcage which kept him pinned neatly to the ground. At the edge of Peters peripheral vision he could see that one of the four other men who'd shot him was tending to the comrade he'd injured during his escape whilst the other three kept their weapons shouldered and ready.
"You've earned my respect this afternoon, 'Magician'. It's not everyone who can surpass my expectations." 'In fact' Commander thought 'It's not anyone, and that grenade trick was executed flawlessly.'
"I'd prefer if you were to keep your hands where I can see them. I was also hoping to ask you a few short questions."
The weapon in Peters face confirmed the obvious fact that Commander's request was more of a demand.
"Co-operate and I will attempt to secure your freedom, resist and I will have no choice but to to leave you to my associates calculated 'mercy'."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:20, Sun 16 Aug 2015.