As she proceeded around the battle, Mag's keen hearing would pick up on some spoken words not far ahead, drifting to her on the dry air despite the battle raging a few blocks away.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">"My brother ... Resistance ... need to find him."</span><br/><br/>They were coming from a few blocks away - enough for the exact position of their source to be invisible.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The Shadow listened to every word Riposte uttered.  Her tone was a little too loud for her taste, and to remind her, the Shadow tightened her grip around Riposte's arms, which she had gripped in a lock behind the girl's back.  Her other hand maintained a firm grip on Riposte's throat, ready to squeeze off her noise if trouble arose.<br/><br/>But she sounded sincere enough.  "Why do you have to find him?" whispered the Shadow, quietly enough to show the girl she wanted her to follow suit.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The wolf ran his tongue languorously over his teeth as the avian girl displayed herself to him.  Yes, she looked delicious.  It was obvious why she had been enslaved - not only her human blood had condemned her to such a life; she'd fairly well earned it.  The way her legs shifted, the way her tailfeathers rose, and how her wings flexed... despite the rough patches of skin on her - marks of a slightly careless master - she was positively mouth-watering.  He swallowed the building drool in his mouth hard, imagining it was her head.<br/><br/>She was offering up her hands to be bound.  His lips twisted into a sick grin.  She knew what was coming.  He sheathed his blade and strode up behind her, clasping her wrists in his working hand, tight and rough.  His muzzle drew up beside her head, and he growled, "Anything I ask?"<br/><br/>Oh, he had plans...<br/><br/><blockquote class="uncited"><div>"...The reprive was comin' o'er... (huff) the brig o' Banff... (gasp)To let Macpherson free... (puff)But they pit.... (huff)the clock a quarter afore... (gasp) And hanged him to a tree."</div></blockquote><br/><br/>His ears twitched.  "What the fuck...?"<br/><br/>He whipped his head around to see the big, imposing shape of Jania, standing beside the stairwell booth he'd just chased this avian girl off of.  Obviously the bear-taur had just come out of there.<br/><br/>He wrenched Vultana around to face Jania, putting her between him and the mad Highlander.  His prey had just become a potential hostage... if this big girl was indeed a threat.  He'd never seen her before.  She wasn't dressed like a House soldier, but she didn't look like a human supporter either - not based on what he'd heard, anyway.  That accent and the kilt certainly didn't do much to hide her heritage.  But what the hell was a Highlander doing all the way out here?<br/><br/>"Who the hell are you?" he asked, his mouth inches from the avian's fragile neck.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>As the sedan rushed onward, the man driving it saw Dreamer step right into his path.  It looked as if, for a split second, he was trying to... to<span style="font-style: italic">block</span>the car with his body.  All too late, the man realized the fatal mistake he'd made.  This man was a cyborg, and invulnerable.<br/><br/>Dreamer's arm connected with the hood, crumpling it like a tinfoil kite.  The force of the blow smashed the engine's uppermost parts beneath, and forced the chassis down onto the suspension - hard.  The car bucked.  The struts tore loose from their mountings and drove up into the hood, bending it up on either side.  The front bumper ground into the pavement, sparking, and the rear tires lifted a clean three feet from the ground.  The men inside were thrown forward like rag dolls.  The driver smashed his nose on the steering wheel.  The others took similar hits.<br/><br/>The car ground forward on the asphalt for a foot or so more before the rear wheels reconnected with the ground.  Most of the momentum had been spent, and the force of the impact had jarred the driver's foot off the accelerator.  The engine wasn't running any longer, either.  But as the car had slid forward, it had smacked into Dreamer, most of the force on his legs.  But there was a certain something about being hit by a car - it was more likely to slap you away from it than plow in and crunch you up, and in this respect, Dreamer came out the winner, especially due to the relatively slow speed of the impact.  His legs were kicked out from beneath him, throwing him forward onto the big divot he'd made in the hood.  His face connected with the windshield, not hard enough to injure him any more than the men inside the car had been hurt.<br/><br/>The car ground to an abrupt halt.  Silence creeped in.  The station wagon was totally unscathed.  Yuri had thrown himself away from the potential disaster and was picking himself up from the pavement a few yards away, eyeing Dreamer's form atop the hood with fear and wonder.<br/><br/>Inside the station wagon, Maeve had heard the tremendous noise, but felt the wagon still proceeding onward.  Her mind ached for answers, enough to make her push the limits of their concealment.  "Dreamer?  What's happened, Kitten?" she asked in a furtive whisper.  In her arms, little Feldana squirmed slightly.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The feline secretary eyed Arget almost coyly for a moment.  "You're Resistance, aren't you?" she asked.  "You guys hit the Palace, didn't you?"  She smiled the smile of the knowing.  "If it's a car you want, there's mine.  I don't know about weapons, but I'm sure there must be a stash around here somewhere.  Just prove to me you are who I think you are."  She stepped slightly back from him, waiting.  She wasn't very bright, but she wasn't stupid, either.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Everyone was loaded into the garbage truck, but the words of Mad Adam, then Baz, clearly put a crimp in Halvorson's designs on a quick getaway.  Still, he knew that if Jania was gone, it wasn't a good sign.  Given that they now had a place to stash their excess baggage - meaning Karogen, Feign, O'Toole, and the old man - he figured a small expedition to retrieve their big, hairy friend wasn't out of the question.  He checked his ammo and winced as the bites on his arm stung in the moist air.<br/><br/>"All right.  We'll find her and get the fuck outta here.  Mad, you do whatever it is you do to find her - and damn quick, we're supposed to be making a little something called an escape right now."  He waited for Baz to open up the truck and let the three of them out - the rat was the smallest, and the only one who could use the hole in the floor to get outside.  While he did, he turned and looked at Karogen.  "Guess what, kid?  You get to make yourself useful."  He pulled his long sword from his belt and held it out to the young man.  "Not like I think anyone's going to think twice about what's in this truck, but if anyone does... you make sure they get the message that they made a mistake."<br/><br/>The moment the back end of the truck opened, he'd hop out with Baz and Mad, making sure to shut the truck behind him.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Marcks gave Emiko the frequency Merelli's brigade used.  Even though Resistance transmissions were encrypted, they'd still be able to hear the SEM and monitor their status.  Then the woman strode away to start properly reorganizing Merelli's soldiers.<br/><br/>Janus and Fenson nodded, tight-lipped, at Iln, then began to follow the SEM, but they turned and looked back at Heretic as the fox sat down in the grass.  The wolf, Bachera, was still there, standing forgotten by a tree in the park.  Nobody seemed to be paying much attention to him, but when Heretic mentioned him, Lieutenant Marcks quickly sidled over and gave him some instructions to aid in the cleanup of the battlefield.<br/><br/>Janus stepped over to Heretic.  "Hey man... ain't you coming?" he asked, jerking his head at the retreating SEM.  "'Coz really, you ain't part of this brigade either, you're with us."  Something about Janus wanted Heretic to join him, if anything for the company.  It was likely to get even more boring, soon, and he could do with the conversation.  Fenson could get a little monotonous at times.<br/><br/>What's more, Heretic would catch sight of a familiar face among the ranks of the SEM... an anthro-fox by the name of Munro.  Last time he'd seen Munro, the fox was sleeping on the streets out in the financial district of the city.  The two hadn't spoken much - Heretic's history was too fluid to let him remember anyone with any definity.  But it was someone familiar, anyway.