RP [Phoenix Team] - Sounds in the Night

ELSEWHERE

HEREWHERE, SARGASSO


Seiren quickly punched out several responses as he hopped up the Galacta Custom to mount in.

Code:

To: PT
FR: Seiren
MSG: Give me 30 seconds and those ghosts won't be a problem. Probably. Wave Array Wonder Laser at 72% charge. ;)

I'll be by shortly if anybody wants to hitch a ride on my mech.

The mecha rolled across the campus to the building Luca and company were holed up in, where Seiren extended a manipulator arm to tap on the window where the party was before laying down the law on any straggling broccoli men outside. Namely with custom, mech-grade SucroSpikes.

 

Sargasso Magical University, South-West Courtyards
Bursts of sugary spikes were getting through the armoured shells of the broccoli soldiers, but they only had staying power once the targets were pin cushioned against a tree or the walls. The ghosts summoned by Stranglehold Omega were unable to pass through the barrier, and the Raiken could see that the inventor's ploy had worked out in their favour - the technological origin of these 'ghosts' of the planet's inhabitants were at bay. Perhaps a technological world's spirit had to be placated much the same way.

Even so, panic was setting in as the proximity to combat against the last broccoli troopers within the interior of the University Grounds and awful sight of synthetic phantoms slithering and crawling against the bubble was getting the better of the crowd making their way. There had to be a way to open up the uni building further to assist with the evacuation, as the rainstorms left high waters and flooding. Police had to continue guiding the evacuees, splitting their attention and confusing the rescue effort.

Unfortunately, the need to open things answered sooner and with a different barrier to break than everyone had wanted, and by someone nobody wanted to expect. A shear between reality came crashing through with a dark silhouette, smouldering to blend with the night sky behind the dome. The machine stood over three storeys tall and loomed uncertain of exact stature and armament, owing to how the machine refused to be identified in such plain sight and within the sensor network, shimmering in light obscuring smoke.

The pop which Driver had used to leap between realities was the focus of everyone's attention within the Common Room. Luca realised who had returned all too suddenly; Hair on edge as he sensed the vibrations of an overclocked engine - the way they made the windows rattle even from hundreds of metres away. "He's here." He said, looking toward the window with his shotgun up and motioning for students to get close to the wall behind him as he scanned the outdoors for the source of the noise. Seiren couldn't see anything on his sensors, but he sure heard a noise.

Yttrium, stepping and striding as her distinct footfalls came knocking on the opposite side of the door Luca had come through. Crone took notice immediately and let the door swing open for the Crude and the Chelti sneaking immediately behind them. "I think this place would look better if you painted it in a shade of blue, wouldn't you think?" She was trying to be coy to get Luca's attention when she saw his back to her, a little shaken by all of the chlorophyll carnage he'd wrecked in the rooms before. "Lulu?" She queried, voice low as she tiptoed on hydraulic heels to get closer, bending over his head and trying to persuade his attention. It wasn't long before she could sense it too, and her mood sunk as she saw what Luca spotted.

♫ Carpenter Brut - Turbo Killer ♫

Tendrils of smoke followed a flurry of missiles heading towards the windows, and Luca stood back with a gasp. "Incoming!" He called out, leaping for cover before the windows burst inwards into glass confetti with the first impacts. Yttrium was caught off guard and fell backwards in hitting the deck with a thud onto her backside, shaken up by the blastwaves. Cordial was in front of Crone immediately, shielding his ward from the blast. The green slime in the room was shaken and discombobulated by the shockwaves disrupting their bureaucratic desires, while the chelti was too far from the exploding façade to worry about the worst of it as the door was slammed shut right behind them. Seiren's Galacta Custom jerked out of the way with a dodge as the co-pilot was watching Seiren's back, but a handful of the score of missiles had struck Galacta Custom, shields dwindling to 60%.

From out of the smoke and dust and the cries of terrorised students, Driver's mecha materialised before the ruined common room, lazily surveying the grounds of the university. "Cute dome you and your team managed to throw together." Driver belittled everyone through speakers in their organically enhanced mecha, the exact pinpoints of their voice uncertain to all onlookers, gravelly with a warlock's power. "Too bad it's now keeping me in here with you until I break it - and once this dome comes off, the world will see the wages of our heroism. Thousands of the dead with which for me to conquer Sargasso, and no more heroes once an example gets made of you!"

An unseen missile was launched from Driver's form, spiralling towards Luca with a whizz. Watching its trajectory and anticipating its movement, he blasted it out of the sky with a shotgun blast. "Are you done, yet?" The man in red asked as pieces of missile casing flew past. He weary with his former partner's senseless destruction in his quest for a purpose when his working life of violence had come to an end - so much blood and heartache had been caused by the Driver up to this point, and when Luca got to catch his breath his mind was made up: "You're coming with me in a heap." He made a simultaneous broadcast: "Phoenix Team, new objective: Kill Driver."

With no Grapple Stunner with which to work with, Luca knew it was going to be a straight-up slug-fest: A mecha versus mecha brawl as Seiren's Galacta custom was supported by the irregular team up in the ruins of the common room and down on the ground - the height of which just out of reach of Ravnir. The only problem was the lack of concrete targeting or sense on Driver - all attacks would have to be close up or from a line of sight. The Galacta Custom was of shorter stature, but it had been charging something big just for an occasion like this. Driver wasn't going to make it easy to land though - the weald-driven warrior had an idea of how Luca's resources conducted themselves in a fight, and he hadn't shown his latest machine's full hand just yet.

 

Elsewhere

Herewhere, Sargasso

Remember what I showed you.

Seiren wheeled about to face the other mecha, but was too slow before the first volley scored his shields and the Driver had blinked. The young inventor swore, slamming a button and changing the mounted Sucrospike into a more widemouthed apparatus, which when he met the Driver's new place, launched a glob of superheated sucre with the intent of gumming up the works. Fragmentary memories of a friend long gone crept into Seiren's head.

Your best protection is not to be hit. I will teach you how to be fast.

Seiren's arms moved quickly across his console, the small mecha hissing and unbolting many pieces. Most of it was heavier armor, there to take hits when Seiren was saving his focus for situations like this. Some of it was ammo reserves for the Sucrospike - though at this point, the two barrel units dropped held more than enough for this fight and beyond, right now he had enough left for two globs.

Once the plates were gone, the sleeker form of the Galacta Custom revealed itself to have many, many circular discs embedded in its frame. Something that the original vehicle never had. There wasn't much time for anybody to focus on this as he pulled a rod embedded in the beltline of the vehicle and pulled a long, metal whip. Suddenly the whip went rigid, and he bore down on the corrupted antagonist.

Tell me, have you ever tried fencing?

He focused. Lunged.

 

Sargasso Magical University, Driver's Battlefield
A blinkering in the luminous backdrop in the sky became apparent from the southern portion of the grounds - one of the many missiles launched by Driver originally had spiralled off into the distance and slammed into the base of a pylon. This blinkering was giving some of the ghosts purchase to begin filtering into the grounds. They wouldn't be a problem immediately though - the Driver and their smoke-shrouded mecha was facing off with Seiren.

"K-Kill!?" Yttrium hesitated after hearing Luca's stern order; Covering his dash into battle was a battery of explosives, each launched from the Crude - new modules arose from her bust and launched cans, packed with reactant explosives synthesised within Yttrium with the aid of Luca's adjustments. "Here I go...!" The smoke trails left by hers were a distinct blue colour, arcing across the field and cutting Driver's path of movement off, and giving Driver that moment's hesitation the inventor needed to capitalise.

Sucrotic globules had already begun hardening in the rushing air against the shrouded mecha, creating some reflective splatters which could escape the obscuring clouds, and give everyone a better bead on Driver. Seiren and Cosmo's movements synchronised to lunge forward in Galacta Custom, shedding their heavy armour in the process for a burst of speed that Driver's raised saw-fist couldn't deflect in time. The point of the blade pierced through the inner workings of Driver's mecha in the gut - halting suddenly, caught.

Driver leveraged a shift in his mecha's internal workings with a backhanded strike from the previously defensive saw-fist, raking Galacta Custom across the shoulder and arm with crude saws. Before the antagonist could stick their fist in to mutilate the machinery further, a crack rung out as Breyja took a shot at the jaw of the mecha - and their shields were still down - was it a headshot?

Driver's close ranged brawling continued a moment later, the maidenhand presumed that Driver was not located within the 'head', but somewhere in the bust of the thing. This raised questions on how close Seiren's skewering was - or if it grazed Driver at all! The antagonist retreated with Seiren in tow, brawling and chasing through the faltering dome, threatening to break it apart from inside, shields recharging - all the while, Breyja was on the run by something firing slugs at her from behind the smoke - but she couldn't get a bead on it from behind all the concealment - drones of some sort?

Just beneath the fighting Mecha, Ravnir had called upon the earth of a curated garden walked by generations of spell-slingers, drawing it out of its previous order to defend the grounds from Driver's otherworldly mecha. Ferrous sheets warping and bending with Ravnir's command to protect the Raiken before a spray of metal shards through the air peppered Driver's flank, clashing against shields to disrupt their recharge cycle and opening the mech up for further attack - starting with swinging for the legs and assisting Seiren on foot - effectively making two fighters against the mecha.

Unfortunately up top and from behind the smoke and from unseen weaponry, Luca and Yttrium were driven behind a pillar by a strafe of cannon fire; Festooned with a collapsed shelving rack that was full of books. "Aiiiieeeee! Lulu!" Yttrium made bitcrunched squeals as she flattened down to hide from a stream of lasers from behind the black shadows. "They're trying to kill you, and me! Where are they even shooting from!?"

Tactically, things were looking limited for Luca and the Crude - but no anxiety came across Luca's features; "Good question - I'd rather they do it softly, with a song even!" There had to be a way to close the distance and get out of being pinned down without the Grapple Stunner, and the man in red realised there was a solution squatting down next to him to get out of dodge and draw attention to himself.

♫ Metal Slug 3 - Assault Theme ♫

Outside the battlefield meanwhile, April Zanetti was assisting the police with evacuating and protecting the evacuees, gliding and dancing across the raging storms outside of the bubble in her tailor-made suit of powered armour. Instant walls and bridges were springing up from Toymaker's belt - festooned with wonderful toys of hers - to overcome obstacles, redirect the water flow, and halt debris from destroying what'd already been created.
From what she was overhearing from radio chatter and the tremors in the ground which escaped the faltering dome not far from her, she couldn't help but wonder if Luca or the people he seemed to collect would ever let something go down quietly for a change.


Something had clicked for Luca - despite the Driver being tied down by fighting Seiren in close combat, something was still peppering shots at everyone - and he saw the tail ends of them at the edges of the smoke - autonomous gun pods - drones fitted with guns controlled by the mecha. "Blue," Luca asked, reloading his shotgun with slugs, and checking that Seiren's gifted EMP grenade was primed. "Can you throw me?" He felt like the only one with a bead on Driver's exact position and movement - he had to give his team that opening.

Yttrium was reconstituting some of her external form from the surface-level damage she'd sustained in the fracas, pumping a reservoir tank of petrol into herself for a quick hydrocarbon boost. New explosives ordinances were fermenting inside of her. "What?" The gynoid replied, briefly confused as she checked her joints were smooth. Her eye searched his expression pleadingly - Luca was rolling his eyes and tutting.

"Throw me-" He repeated stiffly, poking his head over cover, watching Driver's flying mecha through its dashing, weaving and smoky shroud with Seiren and avoiding Ravnir down below. Without the rain and the familiar din of battle to weigh on his senses, and a new-found clearness in catching his breath, Luca realised that Driver was leading where he intended to create smokescreens to hide gun pods within, attacking autonomously while Driver dealt with Seiren directly. Luca had just recognised the patterns and the strategy being used, and a counter-attack was stirring in his mind. "-at Driver. I'll handle the rest."

When Yttrium was aghast at the idea with her pleasing eye, Luca chimed in: "I wouldn't lead you through all this danger and ask you to do this-" A line of bullets flailing wildly across the grounds cut through his conversation momentarily "-if I didn't trust you, or anyone else in Phoenix Team, doll." He smiled as he elbowed the Crude in her arm - in the heat of such high risks, he could hold what was considered casual conversation, listening for a break in the shooting as he turned over onto his knees and shook his rump, indicating for the Crude to grab him. "Now, go long!"

Just behind them, Crone took the telephone receiver from the Chelti, from behind a barrier thoughtful enough to include the paper-cycling slime and the contingent of students she had responsibility over. The pupils and remaining faculty were already making their way out through the back door as directed by Crone - who was on speaking terms most dangerous heroes in Sargasso. "Young woman, I'm calling a favour of the utmost urgency, a matter of many lives-"

She saw Luca getting picked up and thrown outside by Yttrium, thrown as fastball into flight on hardlight wings, the man heading out far and covering the far distance from Ravnir and Breyja at - he was also staying far away to make a swoop at Driver once the opportunity presented itself and Seiren disengaged. I'll crack him open like a crab, then put an end to this. Luca mused - his attention interrupted by the gun pods now going after him - forcing evasive manoeuvres. This gave Yttrium and Breyja the openings they needed, but now the pods had spotted Ravnir as a target, peppering him with rapid-fire lasers and slugs.

Back at the common room, Crone could feel the presence of someone important falling off the grid suddenly, causing her to pause and lose her sentence before resuming, "-this is not work of the Weald, young woman. The powers at play here tonight are something wrong."
On the other side of the line, Harumi replied that she was watching it unfold from the television in her den, and the storm which'd forced her to close shop early wasn't forecast at all.
Crone wasn't sure if all the force of the Phoenix Team could cope with the long term consequences of future interactions with this and having its attention...


Far away and pleased that at least one of her sisters had 'cashed in' on this opportunity she was presenting, Temhebu agreed with that old woman that it would be wrong - from her miniscule point of view anyway. When you had a million different points of view to slip in and out of, masks to paint on layer by layer, lie by lie by lie, what was right - or wrong? It was all beheld by Temhebu.
This knowledge in her grasp beheld the opposition to her grand plans getting its act together in different levels as news of the events at Sargasso University were unfurling to the public within the hour - spearheaded by that tempest in red. "Tch..." The situation was no longer in her total control, but it didn't have to be. The phasma figured it was time for to withdraw cooly, and let Driver sink or swim in order to cover her retreat.

 

North Shore, Hawthorne's Bar, Rex Tannerman's Panic Room
The mayor of Sargasso had made himself scarce, watching what was unfolding at SMU from afar. Though insulated physically and at least fifteen kilometres away from the epicentre of the brawl between Phoenix Team and the agents of Gruppen Tanhauss including one disgruntled former EAD. Alone, they sat nervously nursing the last alcohol he'd had stored for a better occasion than this.

Rex Tannerman himself over the hump of middle age, the fruits of a former life of action and physical appeal having gone to seed in his new life behind the auspices of political office. His platform and positions skirted the border of Sargasso Jingoistic, a sentiment the populace shared without Rex's heavy-handed extent - the usual slogans stating to keep Sargasso safe from within and without, particularly in corporate influence with his preferred punching bag being Gruppen Tanhauss.

The pharmaceutical company with octopussing interests into record keeping, logistics and max-security prisons were Noir natives who loved advertising they worked symbiotically with Sargasso, but Rex felt the relationship had turned toxic in early PA 269 as the early Phoenix Team broke some up of their covert operations against Sargasso - Tanhauss' inferred long-term to rebuild parts of Sargasso in its own image for some extra pocket change or to make some cashed up shareholder happy. Rex was much closer to the truth than he realised in this instant, but with no proof and a captive section of the media doing Tanhauss' publicity for them, it couldn't be proven without being shouted down.

Footage of the extent of this battle came through in patches filled with wandering eyes was what was unfurling right now: A declaration of civil war between the moon colonies of Unity? Could he even declare that? Was such a thing even thinkable? History would've told him there had been spats between colonies in Unity in the past, mostly groups of people with opposing ideologies seeing no choice but to resort to violence to make their message within their sphere the dominant one. But people, aliens, things and the former tyrants across the wandering stars had waged wars over less in the past.

There was a knock on the other side of the panic room door. Rex wasn't expecting anybody, and didn't want to expect anyone, knowing that there would be consequences to face. The media? Chances were they were going to ask what the extent of his contact with former-EAD Phoenix atop all his other shady connections with other private interests across Sargasso. His caucus? They were going to eviscerate him for 'selling out' to a company from Noir and hiding from the effects of the fallout. The fam-ly (his pronunciation) he was fond of fawning over when the cameras were pointed at one of his sensitive issues? He wished. "I'm not here..." Rex protested, half slurred through a microphone, knocking an empty over in the process.

Oh - who had come for him was worse. "It is not negotiable," sounded a robotic voice from within the panic room. The colour drained from the mayor's face as he realised who was asking: The Units - he had their attention, now. The foundations of his tower, mental and physical shook, spilling bourbon and toppling bookshelves, books and medals inside of Rex's secure room, followed by the lights and screens blinking out - punctuated with the staccato of ripped up concrete, twisted rebar, piping, computing and masonry being shattered and cut apart dutifully by the Units.

Rex protested impotently from within the sound-proofed, bomb-proof confines of his new prison, trying in vain to salvage the debris what glory he'd attained through life as the whole panic room was lifted from the tower that housed Hawthorne's Bar, the seat of Rex's power, as pitons shot through the roof and lifted it away. Onlookers from nearby balconies and behind office glass watched this unfold, perplexed - there was already a terrible storm out just down south - why would they be working, and for what purpose?

"We do not have to waste time finding a new place for you to remain." The voice of the Units spoke as legion against Rex Tannerman, former sports star and UDD, now able to add former mayor to the list. "We have determined this cubicle of your own design is a suitable vessel for your crimes against The Protocol, pending judgement."
Rex's recollection was already leaping at the possibilities of conviction, and what then. There was one thing he had to cry out for - one thing he thought was unresolved for him, but was out of his hands now. "What - about - Phoenix!?"

"Codename Phoenix no longer answers to you." The legion answered. "They serve the interests of the Unity Protocol, not your private interests alone."
Aside from them was the bastard that choked out Rex: "But who will kill the-"
"Codename Driver has been cleared for pursuit and termination, from all levels of society - with Phoenix being the first to lay claim to their head."

Bounties were out, the information regarding Dean 'Driver' Bodala declassified and disseminated, all their known movements within the Unity Protocol laid bare for whoever could pursue them, should Codename Phoenix fail. Though unpleasant, it was a possibility.


MEANWHILE...!


Barrier Island, 55 Midway Beach
A humanoid robot, eight feet tall and vaguely monstrous in silhouette thanks to their embellishments was lunting through the rain-slick alleyway towards the recently renovated. Their cyclopean eye focussed through the building, determining that there was nobody home, though the lights were on and servers could be felt running. That much was certain, but the birds had flown the coop.

This particular bot had been under Rex Tannerman's thumb, but contacts of in the CBD area watching his arrest unfold gave them the impetus to pop smoke and run from the legal blast zone. Echelon had just finished disseminating and laying bare her previous employer's misconduct, knowing they would find themselves complicit in a large number of things. "TH4T SH0ULD B3 TH3 L4ST 0F 1T..." she droned, reaching for the underside of the roller doors, expecting it to be unlocked.

When the roller doors to Phoenix Team's warehouse hideout didn't budge, she sighed. Opening her index and middle fingers on her right hand, picks and a tension bar came out, fingers bending impossibly to let herself into the lock. A simple raking attempt went ahead, vibrating the pins into a set position and with a twist of the wrist, unlocked. "STUP1D GR34S3H34RT R3TR0-T3CH..." she lamented their mechanical minds, placing too much faith in steel alone.

It didn't occur to Echelon that the place had changed since she was last here to extract Frankie over the Drill Tanks fiasco - the first clue should've been that she didn't have to duck to get inside once the roller door was all the way up. The change she did notice was the additional internal security. Cameras were watching her, and she looked one dead in the lens, waving with a flourish as she closed the rollers behind her.

The security alerts of a known quantity being beamed Luca's way were for the moment ignored. Echelon knew the team was out and doing something better than shaking down dodgy fellas to protect some bent politician's interests. "M1GHT 4S W3LL W0RK F0R S0M30N3 WH0 41N'T C0MPL3T3LY B3NT."
Something in the back of her digital mind glitched for a moment. A sense of deja-vu, from an instance of herself she'd never met. The sensation gave the robot pause, causing their servos to seize up. "WHY D0 1 F33L L1K3 1'V3 D0N3 TH1S B3F0R3...?" She figured it must've been light moisture damage causing a short-circuit.

 

Elsewhere

Herewhere, Sargasso
"Luca, why!"

Seiren cursed his. . . well, not luck at this point. He was moments from firing the biggest weapon he'd ever designed and his. . . Teammate? Boss? Coworker? jumped straight at the giant robot that his giant robot was fighting. The others had their hits, but none of them were getting up on Driver's machine like Pavone was about to be.

So Seiren, in all his exhaustion, decided enough was enough.

"Fine! Cosmo, route half the capacitor power NOW to the grav!"

A hundred centrifuges spooled and the forces of physics recoiled as the Galacta Custom's technological grasp tore into Driver's machine. Forces pushing, parts spacially locking, sheer twisting, such a variety of effects being plied against the hull and limbs of the opposing thing. Driver may have been able to defy reality with whatever Weird magic he had, but the Galacta Custom enslaved the laws.

 

Those who dared the storm to answer the Units' bounty on the Driver were intercepted and engaged by the wayward ghosts summoned by the Omega Stranglehold - the last-ditch grip upon death itself with soldiers of fortune (exact values may vary) engaging the hardlight ghosts. Closer to the university and away from the periphery battle going on around her, April Zanetti had managed to get the staff and students who could answer the evacuation going after diverting the flow of the rainstorms into manageable channels.

In the arena of the university grounds, Phoenix Team made their last offensive push together to seal this deal before any more blood got spilled. Ravnir had expended their prowess and shored themselves up to prevent further injury - all the smallarms gunfire now striking against imbued stone. Meanwhile, a more agile defence of flipping, rolling, and recoil riding from Breyja and her rifle was chipping away against the Driver's flanks and snapping gun-pods out of the air as camouflage begun to fail. Luca meanwhile was angling to swoop into the melee, waiting for the right moment to apply his finishing touch.

While in flight, the man in red noticed an imbalance on his right arm that kept pulling him off his vector of movement. Yttrium seemed to have left a splotch of herself which Luca'd failed to notice during flight initially - and it was worming through the circuitry on the grapple stunner, trying to reconnect its components together for one last jolt hiding in its batteries.

He watched the Galcta Custom pressing ahead on the offensive, its smooth engineering unleashing Seiren's magnum manus: The chorus of discharging capacitors and whining centrifuges to anchor and get a grip on Driver - their silhouette distorting with the creases and shears Seiren was preparing to unleash - with photoactive plating shearing away in strips to reveal the understructure, the concealing smoke was compressed and collapsed in on itself, revealing the crooked underbody of the machinery Driver had become entwined with.

Up close, Seiren could see entombed and ensnared at the core of the mecha the Galacta custom was peeling open was the cybernetic eyes of a terrified, fearful man who was now caged within a cycle of senseless violence, led in with regrets unsolved. The flashes of emotion within Dean Bodala, nee 'The Driver' almost threatened to break free from him beyond snarling animalistic fear. Maybe it was the only emotion he was still allowed to hold onto with everything else having been pulled away from him. When it was all peeled away so violently, what was left but flesh against metal, trying to surpass oneself beyond obsession?

With this vulnerable core laid exposed, Luca came screaming in on a logarithmic spiral fist-first from over Seiren's shoulder and into Driver - striking the man in the mecha square in the chest - shattering the piping and wires that were keeping them inside. Grabbing and pulling, Luca came tumbling out with Dean and the debris of the gravity-sheared mecha. Driver's augmented musculature had ripped and torn apart, red blood intertwined with sterile hydraulic and pneumatic fluid that kept everything below the skin layer strong and agile. None of it meant a thing when the soul had admitted defeat.

Slowly groaning to his feet as exhaustion spun through Luca's mind - he just wanted this over with - he restrained the catatonic, whimpering Dean with an arm lock - with all the tendons between each artificial and real muscle burst from electric discharge, it was impossible for the Driver to mount a concentrated counter-attack, but bursts of electronic stress from shorted circuits lead to the two men struggling - Luca to bring Dean up, and Dean to drag Luca back down.
At this point though, it wasn't Luca Pavone and Dean Bodala trading blows any more - all the cameras and Phoenix Team could see were two broken men, colliding, each coping poorly with life's hands in different ways inside the bloomed shell of the destroyed Mecha, whose magnetised pieces had fallen about them in a spiral.

From a distance, Yttrium could feel something welling from below - a gut feeling that put the organs at the roots of her optical-fibre hair on edge. She realised that there was a reason Driver was holding onto Luca's right arm - the deranged cyborg wasn't just trying to drag their boyfriend into whichever hell Driver had resigned themselves to, but what was on his arm - maybe the end game wasn't exposing how easy it was to expose Sargasso's social and communal defences ahead of a larger takeover from a bad-faith commercial interest, but to get underneath its champion's skin and show that for all the power - there was still a person commanding that skill with worldly connections to the past. "LULU! GET AWAY FROM HIM!" She cried out.

All eyes were on this fight for a reason; Luca's pain-awash mind only realised the fixation when it was too late for him to pry Dean away - should've disengaged when he had a chance. And all eyes were there when the maw of a portal drew open - black tendrils rapidly enveloping The Driver back to their court as Luca couldn't extricate his right arm from the other end - a rare flash of panic across his face when he realised this was a no-win as jerking and pulling on his own couldn't clear the danger.

♫ Perfect Dark - Mission Death ♫

The eyelid between time and space winked shut and Luca fell down - a couple of kilos lighter, and bleeding. He saw and knew exactly what was taken from him in that transaction - and made a concentrated effort to look anywhere but the new, bloody stump just below his elbow. He could feel one of his teeth beginning to shift from how hard his jaw was clenching down, trying to keep from screaming. The last thing he remembered seeing before everything blacked out was seeing everyone crowd around him to confirm his status: Compromised.


THE NEXT DAY...

Barrier Island Medical, High-Sec Emergency Ward
"There's not a peep of you on the news, good or bad, so there is that." Johnny Longhands was talking to the heartrate monitor beside the bed Luca was neither awake nor asleep, partially breathing through a tube through his nose, and practically mummified in bandages thighs up after the doctors were finished. Neither Johnny, Yttrium, or Harumi had been able to get a rise out of the man after he was cleared and put to bed. "I think the Units are keeping you out of the spotlight, a soft media blanket to cover your ass, you know?" Then again, the whole media landscape of Sargasso had torn itself asunder making heads and ends of the most visible aspects of what was going on was raising questions all around.

Without Rex or Dianne around to call the thrust of what was deemed popular, it was open season for other voices loud and haughty to fill the gap and steer the conversation around what'd happened at SMU last night. Outside of the room, Yttrium was anxious - waiting for an answer beside the others who were eager to hear news of anything. "Is he saying anything? Anything at all?" She knew he was alive, but was he still there?
"Dunno, I've been with him for the past hour shooting the shit - he hasn't responded once" Johnny solemnly, "The Units said they exhausted him of anything useful cross-referenced via playback, telemetrics and footage from us and the uni, neither party the wiser."
"You mean they don't know what that Tam Ham was either?" Yttrium said. "I thought Units' were meant to know about aliens big and small..."

A Maidenhand nurse, a stocky man with swept back hair wearing medical scrubs approached those surrounding the hospital room, light-projecting device under one arm and a look of concern on their faces. "I'm sorry ladies, gentlemen, I'm going to have to ask you all to leave - I need to perform some physio and take measurements for a replacement." He didn't know much about the patient, but the record he was given was ... a thick one, which was always the case with former UDD and freelancers that were lucky enough to fall into Sargasso's hospitals. When Yttrium was trying to make puppydog eyes, swishing lashes to remain by her glom's side, the nurse replied with a trained "I'm sorry ma'am, nurse costume or no, you cannot check up on your boyfriend."

Yttrium was deflated, their sheen turning matte as she avalanched onto Johnny, resigned. Caught off guard, the merchant nearly buckled under her weight. He had no idea how Luca kept someone like her around. Hell, looking down the corridor, Johnny couldn't help but wonder at not just the immediate Phoenix Team who'd come by his side, but so many ordinary citizens, human, alien, and otherwise who wanted to pay their respect, or try to voice their frustration and worry in the wake of heroism. Business owners, pedestrians, even members of the UDD had shown up in dress uniform to wish the man well. The nurse entered the room and slid the door shut - their calls and whoops would have to wait.

"Okay, Mr. Pavone, my name is Bradley Metzger, I'll be your physiotherapy nurse for your stay." Nurse Metzger introduced themselves to an eye that was poking through the bandage, putting the projection device down at the foot of the bed. "I'm going to do some preliminary coordination tests, so I want you to take this pointer in your left hand and move it at the targets that appear on the wall..."


> END!

CREDITS
@Luca as Luca Pavone, Johnny Longhands, the citizens of Sargasso, and its Villains
@Osaka as Yttrium Indium Maganese
@Moogle as Seiren Isbala, Cosmo
@Ashlinn as Breyja Sarn
@Jimmy as Mister Snuffles, Finch, The Cousins, Harumi
@Sham as Ravnir Startreader
and introducing
@Ahoy as Blobby Green

Next Post: Nothing but my Medicine, coming soon!