Alhanda flinched as Mag tore the ceiling down and dropped it on the flames blocking Alhanda's way, her guards leaping back in surprise.  They moved to fire at Mag, but she stayed them.  "She's putting out the fire," she murmured.  They nodded, but now they had a small pile of rubble to negotiate.  "Climb over.  Follow her progress.  I'm going to the infirmary."  She climbed over the rubble herself and stepped down into the main corridor of the floor, turning to her right and heading for the stairs down.  Three of her guards followed, watching little droplets of blood seep out from the bandages on her tail and drip behind her.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Chiro was walking down a seemingly useless corridor.  Side hallways branched off into storage rooms here and there, and he even passed by what smelled like a kitchen/cafeteria area.  This must have been the Palace Guard's home floor.  Mag was undoubtedly behind him, and she would very easily be able to locate him here.<br/><br/>Up ahead, there was what smelled like a hospital - it reeked of antiseptic and medicine.  There was also another stairwell, the obligatory end of the corridor.  He couldn't smell much else.<br/><br/>But he heard people moving about in the infirmary and the cafeteria.  Perhaps they were armed, perhaps they weren't, but it wasn't the best idea to guess if he wanted to make it out alive.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The guard watching Arget frowned.  "Goddamn it.  Fine."  He reached over and loosened Arget's bindings, his dagger drawn.  He manhandled Arget into a sitting position on the table, keeping the dagger under the foxboy's chin.  "Get up and move."  As Arget stood, the guard ushered him toward a small door set in one of the near-spotless white walls close by.  He pushed Arget through the door.  "Piss and get out.  You got two minutes."  He shut the door behind Arget.<br/><br/>There wasn't much in the bathroom.  There was a toilet, a sink, a toilet paper roll, a hot air hand dryer, a tiny drain in the floor, and some piping.  The toilet and the urinal had a scented deodorant cake in each.  The soap by the sink came from a simple dispenser.  Everything was painted that same shade of antiseptic white - from the tiled floor to the solid stone ceiling.  There was a vent, too; a small fan came out of a thin duct that jutted out from a wall, hanging over the toilet.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Those guards that ran out from the Palace's outer wall to meet Jania met their quick - and creative - ends.  The remaining guards armed with guns fell back behind the wall, then climbed it to walk along the top edge and take up firing stations there.  Only four of them had been ordered out, and as they tried to find a mark on Jania, they found great difficulty in avoiding shooting one of the soldiers that now surrounded the raging bear-taur.<br/><br/>Three soldiers easily fell from Jania's swiping claws, but now those that had shot up with Berserker Juice weighed in - six of them, all casting down their blades to meet Jania with their claws alone.  Two wolves, a coyote, a fox, a badger, and a raccoon all circled about Jania, lunging in madly to strike at a vulnerable spot.<br/><br/>The guards on the wall eventually lowered their weapons, interested in watching the fight.  That is, all but one of them.  He'd had the good enough sense to take something a little heavier out from the armory this time: a bazooka.  Carefully, he began loading the unwieldy device, and when all seemed in order he hefted the launching tube onto his shoulder and waited for just the right moment to fire...<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/><blockquote><div><cite>KavenBach wrote:</cite>"Are you all right?" He asked quietly...</div></blockquote><br/>Maeve only managed a slight nod at him.<br/><br/><blockquote><div><cite>KavenBach wrote:</cite>"I'm sorry I was too late..."</div></blockquote><br/>She shook her head.  "You think I was expecting you?" She was trying for humor, but her heart was decidedly not in it.  She looked away and fingered the sleeping bag absently, sniffing.  "Thank you... for coming for me..." The words were slow and deliberate; they sounded weak compared to the insurmountable debt she owed Dreamer.<br/><br/><blockquote><div><cite>KavenBach wrote:</cite>"Is there anything you would like to ask me, Maeve?" He asked, quietly, his steel-gray eyes not guarded as they had so often been in the past.</div></blockquote><br/>Her face smoothed out into a neutral expression.  She eyed the open, silvery wound on his arm.  After a moment, she began, "You said so much in the house, I began to mix up what was fact and what was fiction.  Dreamer... who are you, really?"  She fixed her gaze on him, her brows arching in a look of desperation.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Feldana tagged along with Sherra and Kitten, smoothing down her little nightdress with her tiny hands and mumbling the words to a lullaby she'd just absently remembered.  When Kitten mentioned leaving Dreamer and Maeve, she looked up as if she'd just heard him.  "My Auntie Maeve's okay?!" she cried, excitement on her every feature.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The medic was flat on his back, his head rolling from side to side in confusion as he tried desperately to regain full consciousness.  The guard Feign had directly fired at fell over on his side, dead as the bolts found their marks in his neck.  The other guard's gun made a horrendously loud noise as the barrel splayed open, sufficiently jammed by Feign's lucky shot.  The guard took shards of metal to his eyes and tumbled away behind the pillar, screaming.<br/><br/>The guard behind the pillar Sara was still pressed against stuck his head around again, searching for Feign.  When he saw just a hint of the young man, he fired to force Feign into cover and surged around the pillar, ducking for cover behind an overturned pew.<br/><br/>Sara apparently hadn't been seen by this one, and now his back was wide open for a shot.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Halvorson took hold of Karogen's shoulder a little roughly with his free hand, pulling him close out of prudence as the group hurried back to their means of escape.  Mad and Baz were allowed to take point and rear.  As they rounded the corner of the Cell Block Beta corridor into the main dungeon hallway, they could see - dozens of feet ahead through the anti-tank mine blast hole - that the chapel looked to be empty.  The column Sara was by blocked their view of her and of the guard that had rushed past her.  But they heard the shots.<br/><br/>Mad, with her psychic sense, could tell that the guards that had begun to search the first cell block were done and running back to the main dungeon hallway.  They all had mere seconds to run out through the blast hole, into the chapel, and away down the funeral corridor to the catacombs.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>((OOC:  Just so ya know, Chiro, Iln is still carrying Emiko inside her, trying to reform her hand.))<br/><br/>Janus and Fenson watched Iln and Heretic in a bit of hushed awe.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/><blockquote><div><cite>Saiai wrote:</cite>"Guys... guys... get in here..." He'd tried to say, but the wind had left him for the moment.</div></blockquote><br/><blockquote><div><cite>SeruOmen wrote:</cite>Jenten shouted, "Medic!! We need a medic down here..."</div></blockquote><br/>The private that had rushed downstairs had finally gathered the other soldiers together and they were coming up the stairs as Jenten had shouted.  A medic that had tagged along with the group rushed over to Jenten, immediately dropping his bag on the floor and opening it, searching about for splints and bandages to mend Jenten's broken foot.<br/><br/>The others, five privates including the one that had stayed with Jenten, rushed into the darkened room together, wielding their motley assortment of weapons.  One of them found the light switch.<br/><br/>*Click.*  Colonel Merelli was bound to the floor with strong nylon straps looped through tackles that had been hastily screwed into the wood.  Beside him, an athletic man in his early thirties lay naked in a pool of dark blood - a much darker shade of crimson than any other blood they'd ever seen.  The gash in his throat was the source of it, and as they watched, the gash seemed to fluctuate; the edges were visibly wavering like the surge on a beach, as if the skin was trying to ebb over the oozing gash but couldn't quite find the momentum.  The end of his nose and a hole in one of his wrists were suffering similar situations.  His hands were groping Merelli's face, toying with them and making the Colonel flinch and open his mouth as if he were screaming - but the strange ball-like clamp fastened around his neck choked off any sound.<br/><br/>There was no sign at all of the wolf they had fought earlier.<br/><br/>Raice was on his back near the right-hand wall, his eyes glazed with shock.  Marice was standing off to the left.  As the Resistance men swept in, the man hastily swung his hand over the thicker needle jutting from Merelli's chest.<br/><br/>"Anyone comes closer and he dies," the man said weakly, holding the hand just above the end of the needle.  The privates stopped short, looking at the man in both puzzlement and apprehension.  Merelli's eyes, still adjusting to the new brightness of the room, were wide open with fear, looking right at the man's hand.  "Heh... so you do care about each other," the man's raspy voice chuckled darkly.  "And still nobody's asking any questions."  The man coughed and blood trickled out his mouth and down onto Merelli's shirt.  His hand wavered dangerously.