There is no more response from Harry. But the alarm continues and a bunch of orcs can be seen about 100 feet down the hall. They are rolling a cannon on wheels and aim at at the heroes. "Loke-tar!" one of them yells as they light the fuse on the cannon.

Here's a general map of where we are:
Us = us. Michael, Mandy, Haalima, Joe, Mittens, Expendable Cop

/---\__       _____
|    Us\_____/     \_____________________/
|S   Us _____       _____________________ Cannon
|E  /--/     \_____/                     \
W
E
R
 

This message was last edited by the player at 03:35, Thu 04 Aug 2011.

Mandy drops the baseball bat and screams, as she dives for cover.

Mittens charges forward, does several flips, then leaps through the air, landing on the backside of the cannon.  The force of her landing spins the cannon upside-down in a 180 that turns the cannon on the badguys!  "Have a taste of your own medicine!" she taunts, plugging her ears before...

Mittens snaps out of her split-second fantasy and dives for cover!

"One wonders how they wound up with an old-school cannon that uses a fuse.  Plug you're ears, everyone!"

She takes her own advise.

  There are some important things Joe must do before joining in the popular action of taking cover.  First, is making sure that there didn't happen to be pipes of flammable directly behind him, thus where the cannonball would shoot.

  Second, provided the entire hall won't explode as a result of cannons, make sure the Blue dressed redshirt of a Cop is out of the way.  Though if tackling a cop out of the way of a cannonball gets classified as assaulting an officer, Officer Fudge Nutter is on his own.

Michael pulls out ear plugs and puts them in his ears, while at the same time focusing on the chamber a little ways into the hallway. He ports there and is ready to attack any orcs who happen to be there.

When Michael teleports, he finds himself in the face of the orcs and right next to the cannon. The orcs did NOT see him coming. But the cannon goes off. BOOM! The cannonball winds up slamming into the ceiling of the doorway, making it begin to collapse. It's clear the orcs were more interested in making sure the heroes either didn't get in or wouldn't have a way out.

(OOC: Dramatic diving will get you all inside. Mandy will get in no problem, regardless.)

"Diabolical!" Mittens shouts, "Aiming at the ceiling!  Watch out for the cave-in, everyone!"

Mittens of course dives toward the cannon orcs, tumbles a bit, then gets up running at them!

  Part of Joe's brain wonders how this situation would manage to block the doorway enough to stop travel.  This gets overridden by the part of Joe's brain that assumes 'because it would be annoying, therefore happen'.  Either way, he goes to help get the Cop through the doorway, Cop first in front of him, yelling back to Haalima "Help me with this so I don't get crushed trying to help this guy."

  Hey, if the Dancing Tiger Horse can bust a door down, she's probably his best bet for help moving a chubby cop.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:13, Sun 14 Aug 2011.

"Right!" Haalima shouted at Joe.

And then she proceeded to run forward and shove him and the cop, pushing them through the falling debris with one hand while using the other to try to push away anything larger than gravel that might fall toward their heads.

With all the excitement and explosions, it was possible that nobody noticed the breeze of fresh air that wooshed down the corridor ... past the tumbling, summersaulting Mittens, past the brassy cannon, past Michael and the orcs ...
and off down the left hand bend; further into the underground stronghold.

One second it was there, and the next second, she'd blown on past.

Mandy was looking to get a better idea what was down the left hand corridor; and was especially looking for any prisoners that the orcs held.

Michael is glad to have the ear plugs in, as the cannon goes off right by his head. Since he is already in, he does some quick attacks to the orcs while they are confused and stunned that he is there.

The heroes manage to get the cop through, but a chunk of ceiling hits him on the head, knocking him out.

Meanwhile, all the heroes are now trapped inside, but Mike takes out the off-guard orcs.

Mandy finds what looks like a rather big, beaten up man who is guarded by a couple orcs. She also finds across the way another room also guarded by orcs, that contains a little blond girl who has two orcs holding her down while another is whacking her feet with a plank that has nails sticking out of it. The girl's feet are not bleeding and some of the nails seem bent. Another orc is pouring something in the girl's eyes and mouth. The girl is crying.

Still further down the hall is a large steel door that is guarded by two 10' tall suits of armor.

Seeing that Reaver's taken out the immediate threat, Mittens rushes to the downed officer, checks his pulse, then snatches his radio.

"10-53 officer down!" she hollers, "11-41 we need an ambulance!  His condition looks stable, but I don't want to take any chances.  We're near where we entered at City Hall Park.  Be advised, the way is blocked by a ceiling collapse.  You're gunna need an excavation crew to dig us out.  Enemy was armed with a cannon, but is now neutralized.  Likely more of them, so backup would be marvelous.  Over."

She releases the button, returns it to the officer's belt, and takes a deep breath.

"Wow, nice work, everyone!  This guys' gunna be alright, but there's nothing more I can do for him, so let's get to rescuing the hostages!"

She gets up and heads in Reaver's direction.

Michael takes only a moment to look at the cave in. He had a short thought of 'well no going back now,' which was squashed by,'there is no way I was going back anyway.'

He looked over the orcs that he knocked out for anything useful, finding some handcuffs which he used to chain them up and out of the way. Their group didn't need them to come to later on and flank them. He also made sure to take the keys to the cuffs with him.

He is happy to find a few grenades, smoke and flash-bang only, which can definitely help at some point.

He takes the lead, shield and baton in hand. He moves up to the doorway and peeks through, making sure not to be seen.

  "Right Mittens, leave you in a dark tunnel alone if you get knocked out because there is nothing I can do for you.  I'll keep that in mind along with the fact the same would be done to me."  Yeah, Joe gets that trying to bring along that much dead weight as they do their thing is far from practical.  But it doesn't mean Joe likes it.

  He more quietly follows after Michael, considering further bitter commentary just might give them away.

Nobody had seen Mandy since she dove for cover, down the far end of the tunnel. But now she came trotting down the corridor, out of breath, from deeper within the Orc Underground Compound.

"Down ... this ... way ... ... captives ... being ... ... tortured"

The sound of the cannon going off had attracted attention from deeper inside the cave and the group can hear distant shouting. "To the entrance!"

When Michael peeks around the corner, he sees a hall with guards at various doors. He can hear the distant crying of a little girl. He then sees some orcs turn a corner and begin running through the hall, towards the corner Michael is peeking around.

A whole lot can happen in a short time.

"If you think you'd be more use to this officer than to Liberty and the others, you're invited to stay behind, Joe," Mittens answers Joe, "Where the heck did Mandy...  Oh there she is.  Wow.  Thanks for scouting ahead.  Now we know where to... well it sounds like they're comin' for us, now.  How thoughtful of them to save us the effort.  Let's see if we can turn this thing on the enemy."

This thing meaning the cannon.  She looks for means to reload and turn the cannon on the incoming enemy and gets to work if means are to be had.  If not, she loots an orc for it's taser.

Michael takes the smoke grenade and tosses it down the hallway. If nothing else, it will make the enemy pause, giving them more time to get ready. He looks back at the group and sees Mittens trying to load the cannon. Since Joe is by him he tells him,"The cannon loads like a big musket. That bag over there has powder in it and goes in first. Use the plunger looking thing to push it all the was in. Then the cannon ball. If you can find a grape shot, a bunch of small cannon balls, load those. Then get ready to light the fuse. You have a lighter right? Nevermind, here take mine, but I better get it back!"

Michael passes him a very nice stainless steel flip top lighter.

  Joe 'what?' faces at Mitten trying to put the cannon to use.  "You want to use that thing against them?  Isn't that kind of extreme, I mean it's a canno-"  Then Mandy finishes her out of breath report on the situation.

  12 year old girl being tortured...  This will not fly.  "On second thought, let me help you with that Mittens.  Wouldn't want you to miss."  Well that's definitely one heck of a 180 switch, but these things can happen.

  He'll load an appropriately sized chunk of rubble into the cannon if he needs to.

Haalima held up a hand and cleared her throat. "If we didn't want to resort to wanton violence, I could try to distract them." The small, slightly devilish grin that popped up on her face was probably a little disturbing, but even in the middle of a rescue operation she would relish the chance to show off her dancing.

There is gun powder or whatnot, but nothing to load the cannon with except unconscious orcs...

As for whether Haalima gets to do a dance, that's up to the others in the group.

Meanwhile, the orcs down the hallway are heard coughing and don't show up as soon as expected as they are blinded and thus, slowed down.

"Nice shot, Reaver!" Mittens commends, "And excellent idea, Haalima!  Keep 'em occupied while we prepare to defend ourselves from the inevitable wanton violence.

After all, what could be more distracting than a dancing tiger horse?  Mittens doesn't have the bright idea of loading rubble as shot and gets to stuffing an orc down the barrel if he fits.  Cinematically, the comical value of the orc being shot at the others would likely make him much more effective ammunition than serious business rock-shot, so in her mind the same should hold true in real life.  Maybe.  Of course, she won't object to her allies loading everything else available into the barrel.

ooc: are the orca coming from the corridor that Mandy has just emerged from? Or from the other direction?


Mandy whimpered a little, and ducked behind the nearest solid object (the corner, the cannon, or Michael).  From there, she peered out with mixed fear and curiosity.

The earlier map:

/---\__       _____
|      \_____/     \_____________________/
|S      _____       _____________________ Cannon
|E  /--/     \_____/                     \
W
E
R
 

Where we are now:

                     _______
                    |       |
         ____       |Harry  |
        |   _|      |   ____|        ___
        |  |________|  |____________/   |    Large
        |   ______Smoke/Orcs________    | <- Steel
      __|  |__      |  |____        \___|    Door
   __/        \__   |       |
__/     Us &     \  |Liberty|
__     Cannon     | |_______|
  \__          __/
     \________/

Don't forget: large steel door is guarded by two 10' tall suits of armor.