The Daily Grind - Chapter 187 (Patreon)

“I think it’s time we blow this scene.  Get everybody and the stuff together.  Okay. Three. Two. One.  Let’s jam.”  -The Seatbelts, Tank!-

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Gunshots rang out.  Whatever grey lit magic the kid was doing to keep everyone trapped here, it seemed to keep sound in too; the gunshots were louder than they should have been, pops and cracks turned up to the point James was having trouble thinking.

Also because they immediately started cracking against the golden grid of his shield bracer.

And it was at that moment that he realized that most of the gunfire was from the police.  And due to the fact that he and Sarah were sat closest to the parking lot, they were the first targets.

“They’re shooting at us!”  Sarah yelled, a manic laugh in her voice as she processed that fact amid the screams from the handful of employees and diners in the restaurants around them who were starting to realize there were bullets in the air.  And that the police were, in fact, shooting at *everyone*.

James checked his bracer.  Twenty six shields left and dropping as the cops took aim.  Badly, though.  Only one in every five or six shots was coming close enough to trigger the shield.  “Back!”  He called to Sarah, interposing himself between her and the cops, letting her keep her bracer set to something else.

Sarah didn’t run right away.  Instead, she swept her arms back, planted one foot forward, and whipped an arm around in a wide windmill motion.  Her ethereal magnetic musculature caught on the edge of the lawn furniture with the motion, and she leaned into it.  And the table she and James had been sitting at spun away like a metal pinwheel, remnants of their lunch spraying into the surroundings while it crashed through the advancing front line of the police, sending men sprawling to the ground.

“Sorry!”  Sarah yelled as the gunfire eased up while her targets sought cover and she sent one of the chairs on a similar vector before pulling back.

James followed, sliding behind a low brick planter that had a tree in it near where Alanna and Karen had been having their now-aborted diplomatic meeting.  “Hell of a day, huh?”  He asked Karen with a shaking voice as he ducked his head down out of the line of fire.  The woman just looked back at him with raised eyebrows from her low crouch, pistol held pointed down in a professional grip in hands that still shook.

A thundering detonation sounded, a thin lick of flames curling around their cover but not burning them.  From around them, James tried to pick out the shouts and screams.  The Alchemist's Nobel guard was fighting the old lady, the militia was trying to leave, the police were… just shooting people?

Crushing the rude thought he had, James tried to analyze that, and found that it didn’t matter in the moment.

“Okay.  Alanna.“ James met his partner’s eyes.  “You ready for a boring job?”

“Always!”  She replied.

“Get Karen out of here.  There’s a barrier or something, but that way,” he pointed down the right side path out of the courtyard, “you can at least get around the corner and maybe into one of the shops.  Get her clear.”

“I can-“

“No.”  Alanna cut Karen off, clapping a hand onto her shoulder.  She looked back at James.  “I love you.  Don’t die.”  And then, during a brief lapse in the gunfire that was still chipping at the bricks and breaking windows around them, she shoved Karen to her feet and toward the fresh cover of one of the brick pillars, aiming for a path that would take them out of the line of fire.

Karen was a lot of things, and James realized some of them might surprise him. But Karen also had a kid waiting for her.

He turned to Sarah.  “Get to the kids.  I’ll get the Alchemist.”  He said simply.

Sarah nodded once, a riot of panic, determination, and manic glee warring for space on her face.  Then she dropped to her stomach, and started crawling along the low brick wall.

“Can anyone else hear me?”  James sent over his wavering link.  The problem here was that Pendragon was the one carrying their central receiver, and Pendragon was outside of the barrier.  And the local wi-fi braids they had were about as powerful as a cell phone hotspot; unreliable and not working well enough here.  “Team two, if you can hear me, hunker down and stay alive.”  He sent.

And then, James moved to peek up over the wall, but spotted a man in a police uniform and vest moving with specific steps around behind his cover.  No, not specific.  His brain had just enough time to register it as a jerky, rough motion before the cop raised his gun and started putting bullets down on James’ flank.

James shot back.  The Walther he’d had in a concealed back holster dropping into his hand like an old friend, the vectors and potential evasion lines from his enhanced Aim letting him put down four shots, three of which took the man’s legs out.

Something was wrong.  And as bitter as James could be about the structure of US law enforcement, he wasn’t going to start slaughtering cops if he could help it.  At least not until he ran out of shield charges.

Already only seventeen charges left.  He winced.

No time to worry.  Most of the rest of the police were dragging their fallen away from Sarah’s impromptu projectiles, so James had some seconds before they started shooting at him again.  He peeked over the wall.

The woman who reminded him of his grandma was dueling the Nobel mercenary, and it wasn’t even a close contest.  In the brief exchange, the man tried to pull back and bring his machine pistol up, but the woman just flickered forward like a dancer that could warp space and slapped the gun out of his hand.  The Nobel might have been waiting for this, judging by the two other guns scattered across the courtyard that had already had this treatment, and as the woman curled her fingers into a claw that scythed through ghostly flesh without touching it, the Nobel’s arm began to glow a bright cherry red.

He lunged.  She feinted.  And then, the instant before the arm detonated, the woman had a blade in her hand.  All of a sudden, a wash of warm kindness came over James, and it seemed to stagger everyone else around the courtyard too.

Then the woman cut the Nobel’s arm off, right where the explosive potion-induced tumor was forming.  Yanked dripping red flesh and corroding bone away, and flung the limb over her shoulder.

One of the militia caught it.  And died screaming a second later when it blew up and immolated him, catching one of his buddies in the side.

One of the militia broke instantly, throwing his gun down and running back the way they came.  Their leader, the big guy, was yelling some kind of command and firing back wildly, while the other one actually bothered to aim his overly decked out rifle and started putting bullets into the old woman.

Every shot that should have hit her, instead, one of the tiny knife charms woven into her hair shattered.

“Stop that!”  She admonished, a rush of kindness and compassion coming with her words, and the shooters froze.

Then she turned back, blade missing, and punched the Nobel that was still clutching the stump of his arm in the head hard enough to crumple him sideways.

James spotted Euphrates, their errant Alchemist, crawling toward the door to the insurance office, and he made a choice, keeping low and moving to one of the nearby brick pillars in pursuit.

A gunshot deflected off his shield as he moved.  Then another one *didn’t*, buzzed past his ear like a mosquito, and James nearly shit himself as the brick next to his head shattered in a puff of dust and rock splinters.  “*Duck*” came a screamed frantic word in his head, the impression of a spike of an arrow pointed downward coming to him.  James listened, getting low and feeling his hair rustle as another bullet parted it before he was around his cover.

He considered adjusting his defense, but he was down to sixteen charges, and the police were still the ones laying down the most fire.

He pressed his back against the pillar, trying to steady his breathing.  The jingle of a bell, by sheer bad karma not covered by a gunshot, announced Euphrates’ attempted escape.

“No running away now!”  The smiling woman said kindly, moving up toward the door.  “Face death with some dignity, Euphrates.”

James tensed, the thought that maybe this challenge wasn’t that smart, as he prepared to step out.

“Y-you can’t kill him!”  A young man’s voice challenged the woman.  James tilted his head a fraction of an inch, and there, between the woman and Euphrates, was one of the students.  He was bleeding from a gash on his head, wobbling, and entirely unprepared.  But he was standing over the Alchemist with his sword in a white knuckled grip.  “W-we need… he has to answer to us.”  The kid challenged.

The woman raised an eyebrow.  Glanced down at the sword.  Then she reached out almost fondly, grabbed it by the blade, and plucked it out of the kid’s grip.

“Not bad.”  She admitted with a nod, looking at the blade.  “Made it yourself?  Not bad at all, kiddo.  You’ll go far, if you smarten up.”  Then she balled her wrinkled, bony hand into a fist, the sword collapsing like light into a black hole.  When she opened it again, she was holding another of those little charms woven into her hair.  She let go, and it drifted up to tether itself to her scalp, joining the others.  “Now out of the way.”  She raised a hand.

James moved, interposing himself between her and the kid.  His shield, set to ‘backhand’ for a brief moment, flared as her arm deflected.  “Move, kid!”  He yelled.

“Oh, sonny, you are getting in the way of-“ The woman cut off as another of her charms broke, a bullet vaporizing near her head.  James triggered his shield back to .38 as the police redirected their fire their way.  Gunshots intensified as the militia realized they weren’t immune to the shooting, and their still standing members started retaliating against the cops.  James saw one of them chug something from a thin glass flask, then roll through a wall like it wasn’t there; a purchase from the Alchemists for sure.

“Alright, getting kind of-“ James didn’t get to finish his sentence as the woman took advantage of his altered shield frequency to leg sweep him.  He reacted quickly, blocking her follow up strike with the arm holding his gun, but then she had a knife in her hand that radiated something James didn’t recognize.  His eyes went wide as she stabbed down, and he got an arm up just in time to stop her from carving out an internal organ.

It still nicked him though, and suddenly, the ground didn’t feel quite right.

Actually, suddenly *down* didn’t feel quite right.

The woman snatched the gun from his hand, and James yelled something rude as his subjective ‘down’ changed to ‘that way’, and he plummeted away.  Past the tree and the dying Nobel, past where he and Sarah had been having lunch, and straight into the plate glass window of the Ham House.

His back hit the window, and shockingly, it held.  Though a spiderweb of cracks radiated out from around him, and he could hear glass creaking ominously as the gravity effect didn’t wear off, continuing to pull him into it.  All breath left him in a rush, and James fought with all his willpower to get his lungs to start working again. He raised an arm up, scrambled around for purchase, and didn’t find it before there was a deeper squealing, squeaking crack of grinding glass and the window gave out under him.

James fell through the shattering window.  Shards of razor sharp plate glass tugging at his coat, one of them slicing through the thinner material of his pants and gashing his calf.  And one, with a truly unpleasant feeling, catching against the cords on the back of his neck, pressing into his skulljack link and severing multiple important parts.  But, at least, not slicing his neck open in the process.  And the glass fell *down*, while James fell ‘down’, so he wouldn’t have to worry about landing on it.  Not that he was thinking anything more complicated than ‘oh fuck’ during this process.

He hit the back wall of the Ham House like he’d been thrown off the second floor of a building, breath leaving him again as he landed hard.  His left arm crunched as his muscle was smashed against a wall decoration of a particularly unhappy pig.

Then the gravity effect wore off, and he toppled to the floor, landing on his feet but falling to his knees with a cough as he sucked in breath after breath.

James looked up to see a handful of patrons and staff cowering behind the front counter, hands over their heads, a couple of them praying.  There were at least a few bodies in the lobby, either moaning or unmoving, victims not of crossfire but the police targeting anyone who moved.

“Hell of a day, huh?”  James gasped out.  They stared at him.  One of the employees brandished a knife in trembling hands.  “Right.”  He staggered to his feet.  Brushed himself off, took a deep breath.  And then, noticed the militia member crouched by the front window.  Staring at him.  With a sigh, James met his eyes, and started striding over.

The idiot raised his rifle, and James snagged the toe of his boot on the strap of a backpack strewn on the floor, whipping it up in a shower of glass shards, knocking the gun up into the air as a single shot rang out and threatened to deafen him all over again.  Lunging forward, James wrapped the backpack’s strap around the man’s arm, threw his body weight sideways, rolled the man to the floor with his knee on the man’s back and the backpack tangling his arm.

“Let go of your gun.”  James ordered.

”Uh…” The dude gasped out. He was maybe only a little older than James.  Mid thirties at most.  How he’d gotten mixed up in this, James didn’t know, and right now he didn’t give a shit.  He’d just fallen sideways and walked it off, this camo-pattern moron was in no position to argue with him.  And, as James continued to stare down at his prone form, the man relented, awkwardly letting his grip slip off his rifle.

James took it, checked the safety, and nodded, shifting off of his temporary prey.  “Get to cover.  Stay hidden.  *Quit your fucking paramilitary bullshit*.  You will not get a second chance.”  He glared, and the man scrambled to get back behind the counter with the others.

That dealt with, James checked outside again.  The police had occupied the central part of the courtyard, cutting him off from where Euphrates had run and been followed by the woman.  James hoped he wasn’t too late, but he needed a path across.

James winced as one of the cops took a shot at one of the students, the girl flickering in a motion she shouldn’t have reasonably been able to make and catching the bullet on her buckler.  James was too far to intervene, but he did crack off a pair of shots at the cop’s legs to try to buy the girl time to get her friend around the corner and out of the line of fire.

He ducked and didn’t take any more shots, not wanting to draw fire into the building he was in that still had civilians in it.  But he still needed some kind of distraction, or else another route through.

His path across came in the form of, alarmingly, *more Alchemists*.  He didn’t see if any of their actual members had shown up to join the party, but there were two or three new Nobels who had arrived and, moving in precise and efficient flanking patterns, showed that *they* had no problem killing the police who were still jerking around like they were puppets on strings.

James didn’t have time to care.  He decided to take a chance on the new knowledge that the barrier only kept things from leaving, grabbed his telepad, found a discarded pen on the ground from someone’s lunch bill, and wrote the name of the insurance office on it.  He steadied his new rifle, and tore the page.

Blinked into place crouched behind a potted plant thirty feet away.  Directly next to a bleeding man with short salt and pepper hair and a face that looked like it was made to have rugged stubble on it, clutching his injured side with one hand and a pistol with the other.

“Hey.”  James muttered.  “Please don’t shoot me.”

The man, the CIA agent James had seen get shot earlier, tensed up but didn’t turn.  “Dammit.”  He muttered, moving to lower his gun.

“You’re gonna want to keep that.”  James told him, sneaking a look around the room.  The body of an insurance agent lay slumped against the far wall just under a wide round clock that had a bullet hole in it, still ticking away.  Papers and pens were scattered across the front room.  “Where’s Euphrates?”

“The old woman? She jumped up to the roof.  Because today has been so normal.”  The agent sounded almost belligerent.  No, not ‘almost’.  He sounded actually angry at how this was going.

“No, the Alchemist.  The man who came in here.”  James clarified, scanning the ceiling above them just in case.  Still keeping his voice low.

The agent actually did turn to stare at him, keeping his composure pretty well when he saw a rather beat up James, a man younger than him, carrying a stolen assault rifle.  “Alchemist, huh? He ran through a wall and out the back.”

“Cool.”  James sighed.  “Sorry your partner shot you.”  He added.  “I’ve gotta get back to work.”

“It happens.”  The CIA agent said, like that was normal.  “Good-“

Whatever he’d been about to wish James, who was so far the only person that hadn’t taken a shot at him today, it was interrupted by a crash.  From the upstairs office space of what looked like a tax office over next to where the militia had set up their final stand with whatever reinforcements they’d had brave enough to push through the grey and into why James was mentally calling the Doom Dome, a human figure smashed out of the window and rapidly plummeted to slam into the ground.

Then the figure split, resolving into an image of two people, one rolling off the other who was either unconscious or down for the count.  A woman in a tattered suit and broken shades staggering to her feet and taking in the line of guns facing her.

“Your partner seems to be doing well.”  James said reassuringly to the CIA agent.  “And… uh…” He peeked up as far as he dared, getting a better look at who was on the bricks.  “And her twin? I don’t suppose she has a twin sister, huh?”

“If she does, I wouldn’t know.”

“Cryptic.”  James nodded.  “Keep your head down.”  He ordered.  The gruff man just looked back at him with an expression that did little to reassure.  James rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything else, and instead rose to a crouch walk and started moving, pressing into the back of the building, rifle up and ready.

He hated this rifle.  It had two different sights on it and he was pretty sure neither one was calibrated right.  James already missed his sidearm.  That pistol had been a gift from his partners, and he was kinda pissed about losing it.

James swept through the tiny back office, which was mostly just a couple desks facing each other, a small break room with coffee cheap enough to be hostile even by Officium Mundi standards, and a door out the back.  It was empty as far as he could tell, but one of the desks had been swept clean, papers and paper clips strewn around in the wake of someone passing or diving over it.

He checked under the desk.  The kid from outside was curled up behind an awkwardly tugged in office chair, tears rolling down a bruised face, one arm held tightly against his chest

“You good?”  James asked, and the kid jerked like he was startled, staring at James with panicked eyes.  “I mean, not bleeding anywhere, right?”  The kid nodded.  “Good.  Stay here.  The Alchemist?”

The young man opened his mouth like he was gasping for breath, trying a few times before saying, “He can’t get past the edge.”

“Yeah, I know, none of us can.”  James complained.  “He ran through here, where did he *go*?”

“That way.”  The kid pointed through the break room.  “Out the wall.”

James drew on his enhanced memory and a saved memory of the layout of this place.  Through that wall would put him in an optometrists, and past that, parking lot.  He couldn’t get through the parking lot too far, so he’d have to go either back out into the courtyard, or up into the second floor.

He nodded, rose back up, and moved to the back door, frowning as a distant noise started to intensify.

It intensified more when he opened the door, the rapid *whap* of helicopter blades coming in louder and louder as the aircraft descended as low as it dared into the area around the clocktower.

James absolutely didn’t have time for that one.  The grey barrier was still up, he needed to reconnect with Sarah, get their telepads working, and leave.  This was so far beyond their ability to navigate it was insane.

He darted across the back of the building, confident that the barrier kept him from being jumped by anyone, and ducked his head out into main path to the courtyard.  The helicopter - definitely a civilian model, this wasn’t some military attack chopper - carefully landed on the most open rooftop, allowing a number of people to jump out.  It couldn’t leave, but it kept the engine running, and James tried to stay back and watch, while also scanning the surroundings for his companions.

Alanna had just vanished, making use of the Status Quo earrings she and Karen wore to get somewhere out of the way and hunker down.  James was almost positive she wanted to get into the fray, but he trusted her to keep Karen safe.  Sarah, though, was nowhere to be seen.

The gunfire had slowed while he’d been busy being thrown through a window.  It looked like the police, still moving with jerky, robotic movements, had more or less secured the area.  It also looked like many people who had survived the fight - bystander or otherwise - had been dragged to the central courtyard, and were being held at gunpoint.

The old woman was nowhere to be seen, neither was Euphrates.  But there *were* two other Nobel’s there, with a man James assumed was an Alchemist.  He tried to focus to get his glasses to tell him, and only then realized his glasses were long gone.  Probably from when he got refenestrated.

James shot a nod to the Alchemist who was on the other side of the path as him.  “Truce.”  He muttered.

The old man glowered at him, and James recognized him as the one he’d cryptically antagonized in a diner about a month back.  “Oh, yes, *truce*.  I’m sure that won’t ruin me.”  The Alchemist looked annoyed.  James couldn’t say why.  He just shot him a smile and turned back to the courtyard.

The Alchemist’s guards had taken up flanking positions ahead of them, under cover from the surrounding buildings, but it looked like that was more of a tense standoff rather than an active gunfight.

A standoff that didn’t look like it was going to improve with the introduction of Team Rooftop.  James tried to send another skulljack message to anyone nearby to let them know to stay outside the barrier, but then remembered his link was currently just an awkward dangling hunk of cut cable.

He unclipped it and jammed it into his pocket.  Felt a little better.  Couldn’t think of what to do though.  So James just hunkered down to watch and wait for an opportunity to do something.

A half a minute of waiting later, there was a *flood* of compassion, washing over the whole area as if exhaled from a kind star.  It was strange to feel an emotion from a direction, but James was pretty sure he knew what it meant.  “So long Euphrates.”  He muttered, shaking his head.  He didn’t have long to mourn their contact though.

Someone poked their head over the roof, and the police still in the courtyard almost instantly reacted, turning in a wave and unloading a wall of gunfire.  James flinched back behind his wall until the bullets stopped flying, but whoever had exposed themselves didn’t sound like they’d been inconvenienced by the assault.

“We’re not here for you!  Let our operative leave unharmed, and we’re cool!”  Came a musical bellow from the roof, rising easily over the helicopter engine.  Actually, James realized, it hadn’t felt like he’d heard anything at all.  More that the shouted words had planted themselves neatly in his memory.

Well.  He didn’t like that at all.

What he liked less was the police, in unison, yelled out in a myriad voice, “Oh, but *I* am here for *you*, Harlan!”  The human officers had tears running from their eyes as their vocal cords were pushed well beyond what was healthy.  “Surrender, or we begin executing hostages.”

And then one of the officers dragged Sarah forward from behind the low wall they’d lined everyone up on, and James felt his heart stop.

“You can’t expect me to believe you, Law!”  The voice from the roof echoed in his head again.  “On either count!”  But whatever they believed, it didn’t quite matter as one of the cops raised a gun to Sarah’s head with a stiff motion.

James felt the part of him that urged caution, and urged restraint, shut down.

“Enough of this shit.”  He said out loud, stepping around the corner and slinging the rifle over his shoulder.  The puppet cops didn’t even notice him, but he saw the Alchemist give him a cocked eyebrow.  As if asking, ‘what are you gonna do about it?’

What James was gonna do about it was everything he could.  And, right now, conditions were pretty good for what he could do.

Manipulate Asphalt.  Once, twice, three times, as many charges of the blue activation as he needed to get what he wanted.  His nose started to bleed.  Then, Maker’s Hand Upon The Wheel.  Mercifully, draining Velocity to fuel the spell didn’t actually slow him down, but the tug in his chest threatened to distract him.  He pulled on Aim, for the extra precision he needed.  And he asked the navigator in his head for the right steps to take to not get shot while he was doing this.

From behind James, the parking lot bubbled, and then erupted.  Finger-width tendrils exploded forward, forming arches as they pulled more and more material, keeping themselves solid and stable as they raced toward their targets at a hundred miles an hour.

Only two people got shots off before James’ arcane working was among them.  The tendrils lashing out at high speed, burrowing into the barrels of guns and around their trigger.  And then, James breathed out, wrapped a hand around the central trunk of asphalt that had rushed by next to him, and triggered the Perfect Strike on his earring.  Two charges of that left, with an annoying high reload time, but if this worked he wouldn’t need any more.

The asphalt inside the officer’s weapons blossomed into starbursts, punching out through the metal, ruining firing mechanisms, and rendering guns into modern art.

James wasn’t perfectly accurate.  No matter how enhanced he was, or how blocky the motions of the attackers, he was working with tiny targets held by moving people.  A couple of his strikes hit nothing.  And three of them hit flesh; punching into hands or arms, drawing blood by no screams.  Even when he detonated them and turned limbs into shredded meat, the victims didn’t react.

James probably could have stopped those from making the strike.  But he wasn’t in any mood for it right now.

Deprived of weapons, the police seemed like they hesitated.  But only for a brief moment.  As a collective, their hands - even if they were missing one now - went for batons and tasers.  And seeing James, seeing the person who stood in the middle of the attack that had just taken away their advantage, they silently charged him.

The Nobels actually moved to cover him, but James held out a hand, pointing a shaking finger at them.  “No killing!”  He ordered.  The two goons glanced back at the Alchemist, who was now staring at James with open terror.

“Do as he says!”  The man snapped hurriedly, and the Nobels holstered their weapons without even a shrug, moving to employ their ethereal bodies and enhanced physical strength to begin pummeling the shit out of the approaching group of people that James was now absolutely certain were mind controlled.

James just waited, hoping that no one would get to him or notice that his heart wasn’t quite beating properly, or that his nosebleed was dripping profusely.  He felt lightheaded, and he knew he’d overdone it on the blue orb power.  He was pretty good at this stuff, but he’d never gotten the hang of blues like Dave or Sarah had.

It was a special kind of creepy, watching the Nobels and the police engage in a near silent fight.  The only sounds the crackling of tasers, the taps of shoes on brick, and the dull thuds of bodies hitting the ground.

James tried to steady his breathing, and slipped around the battle, triggering the invisibility from his earring as he passed behind a pillar, and then focusing on hurrying to the hostages.

He arrived just as two people from the roof did too, sliding down and using an awning to break their fall before dropping the last five or ten feet to the ground.  On the other side of the courtyard, another figure slammed into the ground, not bothering to slow anything, the old woman sauntering over like she was going to brunch and not a battlefield.

The two soldiers had short, dangerous looking bullpup rifles up and trained on the woman as they spread out, while the woman just stood there looking around and shaking her head, that pleasant smile still fixed on her bony face.  James kept his own gun ready, but not pointed at anyone.  Yet.  Instead, he lurked and hoped his invisibility would give him at least a little privileged information.

“The Alchemist is dead, and I have places to be.”  The woman said.  “If ya’ll don’t mind, drop your fate weaving so I can get out of here.”

The two soldiers paused, glancing at each other and shuffling farther away, but not lowering their weapons.  From the hostages though, sound started to rise up.  People who were in shock sobbing or starting to ask questions, demanding answers.  People who were injured quietly moaning or screaming.  And one figure, pulling herself to her feet, glaring up at the old lady.

The student, barely a teenager, unarmed but still with a cracked buckler dangling from her arm, looked at the battle hardened lady with a fury that James could easily remember feeling when he was that age.  “You can’t do that.”  She hissed out.  “We needed him to-“

“Kiddo, don’t tell me what I can’t do.  You don’t know the half of it.”  A pulse of kindness radiated from the woman, and she winced slightly.  James doubted anyone else saw it.  “Drop the fate crap.”  Another burst of the emotion.

James decided to take a risk, operating on some strange instinct he wasn’t quite sure about.  He dropped the invisibility, and stood up from where he’d been checking on Sarah.  “We can help you with those answers.”  He said to the kid.  “But you should let her go.  All of us, really.”  He added, before turning to the woman.  “Excuse me.”  James said giving a polite incline of his head.  “May I have my weapon back?  It’s special to me.”  He thought for a second, then held up the rifle.  “I’ll trade you.”

And all that kindness, all that compassion, suddenly compressed in an almost physical pressure around them.  Like the world was warping and starting to crack as James offered little more than a polite request and a friendly smile.

The woman looked at him, an expression of *deeply* bitter annoyance on her face.  “Oh, you cheeky…” She trailed off, before shaking her head and laughing.  “Sure thing, kiddo.”  The rough old voice sounded only a little angry as she flicked one of the charms out of her braided grey hair, crushed it in her palm, and flipped her hand around to reveal James’ gun held out to him. But the cracks in the air pulled back as he she did.  He took it, offered his stolen assault rifle, and got a snort of derision from the woman who just threw it over her shoulder into the bushes.  “Now let me go.”

James looked over at the girl, and made a placating gesture as he holstered his pistol.  “We know some stuff.”  He said.  “We can at least try to help.  Without you getting shot at.”

She wavered, and then, like the weight of the whole day suddenly caught up to her, sagged and dropped back to her knees, shaking the boy next to her and muttering something in his ear.

A few seconds later, the grey around them dropped.  The woman grinned, and nodded.  “You kids be good now.”  She said, before kicking herself upward and vanishing into the sky.

Noises rushed back in.  Car alarms, sirens, shouts and yells.  James stood and faced the two black clad soldiers, their body armor alarmingly familiar, tattoos on their faces a riot of color even under the bland light of mid afternoon Utah on a crappy day.  “Wolfpack?”  He asked, and they tightened their grips on their weapons, focused on him with critical attention.  “Your girl’s over there.  She fell out of a building.”  He gestured to where the duplicate of the CIA agent was slumped against a wall.  The two soldiers exchanged glances, and James saw through his enhanced eye that the tattoos around their ears *moved* slightly.  Then one of them nodded at him, and they stepped aside, moving to grab their fallen companion.

At which point Alanna made herself visible, lowering her own gun and running over to join James.  “Yo!”  She called. “Karen’s out, team two had some nonsense.  What’s going on, you weren’t answering?”

“Oh, lost my link.”  James said, mouth suddenly dry, a bitter taste on his tongue.  He wobbled as his adrenaline stopped flowing and quiet returned.  “We should get out of here, before… uh…”

“Yup!”  Alanna nodded, pulling out her telepad.  “Grab Sarah, I’ll…”

“No.”  James shook his head.  “Is anyone else left around?”

“Yeah, but Nate’s getting us out.  Why?”

“Get a medic in that building, patch up the guy in the suit.”  James pointed as he sat down.  “There’s a kid under a desk in the back.  He’s coming with us.  Get these two also.”  He motioned to the kid.  “And then we need to… uh…” He looked up as a person in armor, stubby shotgun slung to their side, bandolier of a rainbow of different shells across their chest, stepped up to him.  “Hi?”  He greeted them as Alanna tensed up like she was ready to fight this person if needed.

“Paladin.”  The musical voice echoed in his head, and James realized the person’s mouth didn’t move.  “Hell of a day, huh?”

“That’s my line.  And, uh… I don’t have a title for you, but hi?”  His voice felt thick in his mouth.  “You’re not gonna try to shoot me, are you?  Wait, more important, your title isn’t ‘alpha’, is it?”

“More important?”  Alanna said, shifting her stance to be ready to tackle the newcomer.

“I don’t try, and wolves don’t work that way.”  The person replied, shaking their bald, heavily tattooed head.  “Thanks for the assist.  We owe you one.  No more dead kids, right?”  They offered a gloved hand for James to shake, saying the last words like an incantation.

James looked up into warm brown eyes, the person offering not exactly a smile, but a reassuring presence.  “No more dead kids.”  He repeated.  “You are… not what I was expecting.”  He said, taking the offered hand and getting a single firm shake from it.

“Get used to hearing that.”  They said, voice coming in clear even as their helicopter started beating the air again so loud it drowned out all other noises. The other soldiers already helping their downed operative up a rope that was being hauled up into the sky.  “Get your people out of here.  We can meet up some other time!”

James and Alanna shared a glance as the figure grabbed another dropped rope from the helicopter.  “Who are you?!”  Alanna yelled.

“I could ask you the same thing!”  The person yelled back in their heads, before their flight took them up and away from the courtyard.

As soon as the helicopter was far enough away that they could hear again, Alanna flipped it off.  “That was fucking infuriating.”  She said.  Then she tapped her ear.  “Dave says Pen can take ‘em out if we want?”

“Nah.”  James said.  “I like ‘em.”

“Of course you fucking do.”  Alanna grumbled.  “I do too.  Dave’s breaking off.”  She reported.  “EMTs are here.  More police arriving shortly.  Nik’s got everyone you mentioned stable.  Time to go, okay?”

“‘M awake…” Sarah muttered, pushing herself up from where James was standing over her.  “I can… ow.”  Feeling like an idiot, James remembered something and knelt to tap Sarah’s neck, dumping an hour of sleep into her.  He felt a little tired, but for her, with the multiplicative power of her Health, she brightened up right away.  “Oh no!  I have to...”  She jolted upright, then looked around at the courtyard that was still crowded, but no longer filled with an active war.  “James?”

“We’re good.”  He said.  “Get the kids, get home.  I’ll meet you there.”  James glanced back, looking for the Alchemist, but finding nothing except a collection of unconscious officers.  He looked around the courtyard, feeling like he was forgetting something important, but unable to place it, or determine if he maybe just had some lingering dizziness from where he fell thirty feet and hit his head.  “What am I missing…” He said.

“Nothing worth getting arrested over.”  Alanna told him.  “We could steal all the guns laying around?”

“Sure, grab a couple.”  James said, buying time to think.  But by the time Alanna had collected an armful of rifles and two flashbangs, he couldn’t make his brain latch onto what he was thinking.  So the two of them teleported out, the last two Order members out of the area.

It was only when he tried to take a step off the arrival platform and stumbled into a heap that James remembered that he’d been sliced open when he fell through that window, and maybe what he’d forgotten was blood loss.  Adrenaline had taken him pretty far, but now he relied on Alanna to get him the rest of the way to the infirmary.

They were down one Alchemist contact, and possibly had spoiled that entire diplomatic avenue.  They were also up between one and five new enemies.  And yet…

James felt pretty good, blood loss notwithstanding.  Like they’d tipped the scales a little bit away from total catastrophe.  He’d get a full debriefing when he woke up, get some answers when he was less out of it.  But in the meantime, he took the painkiller Deb gave him, dumped another few hours of sleep into Sarah, and was out like a light before she even started sewing up his injury.

He slept so soundly, his brain never did think to ask what happened to the glasses he lost in the fight.