Halvorson shone his light on the webbed-over grate they had used to come in.  "Fuck," he muttered.  He tapped the medic, who was still examining O'Toole's head, and pulled his long sword from the cord wrapped about his waist.  "Hand this to Feign."  The medic stepped over, holding the blade out to the young archer, pommel first.<br/><br/>"Bane..." groaned O'Toole.  Halvorson's eyes narrowed and he looked at the woman on his shoulder, troubled.<br/><br/>Then Mad could feel it... whisperings on the air of rat blood... her psychic sense suddenly peaked, alerting her to a presence--<br/><br/>A glowing limb suddenly clacked on the floor, then two more, as Seth drew himself into plain sight from a side-corridor many paces back.  His limbs were not shielding his compound eyes this time, and as they spotted Baz at the rear of the group, a ghoulish hiss clattered out from the big spider's mandibles.  With shocking speed, Seth surged at them down the hollow cavern, his eight legs drawing him forward with undulating precision.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">"Rat!  Must have rat!"</span><br/><br/>Halvorson spun, seeing the great, glowing spider hurl himself towards Baz and Mad at the rear, his blue glow filling the catacombs, his little eyes shining with unearthly light.  In slow motion, he began to lower O'Toole to the floor, as his mouth began forming an order for Feign to hurry.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The last guard left on the Palace roof shuddered as the last trained sniper fell back and away from the wall, his head torn open by a powerful slug.  He didn't dare take the wolf's rifle and try to finish the job himself... whoever it was obviously was entirely out of his league as a marksman.  He jumped as a loud clatter and a gunshot rang out, sounding like they were on just the other side of the wall.  His hand went to his radio, and he called in the location of the sniper.<br/><br/>The guards left out in the courtyard and manning the outer wall, however, had noticed that the sniper's attention on them had subsided, and the dozen or so of them that were fully intact began to move.  They heard the scream and thud of the one Jania had thrown, and this caused them to rise up above the lower wall's battlements, looking about for the noise.  It didn't take them long to see Jania.  Guns snapped up to shoulders.  An angry voice cried, "FIRE!"<br/><br/>-----<br/><blockquote><div><cite>Saiai wrote:</cite>"So why don't you defy her, if you're that dead set on seeing her done for?" Raice asks. "That's the sort of thing that ain't making any bloody sense around here!"</div></blockquote><br/><blockquote><div><cite>SeruOmen wrote:</cite>Jenten leans his head to the side, looking to Raice. "Maybe he didn't have a choice." Turning back to the shifter... <br/>"Do you want us to get back at her for you...? Try and free the others of your people from her command...?"</div></blockquote><br/>"We're beyond help.  It takes death to release us," said the Midnight Guard.  "The Lady's in our heads.  We love her and hate her.  She makes us kill, and enjoy it."  A powerful set of coughs sent his hand into a precarious waver; at one point it brushed the end of the needle in Merelli's chest, and the colonel's whole body tensed, his mouth gasping in a silent shout of pain.  "Sorry," he rasped.  His neck began quivering, sagging under the weight of his head.  His eyes were not blinking anymore, and his breath was suddenly shallow and quiet.  His skin was white as a sheet.  The ooze of his blood was almost ended.<br/><br/>-----<br/><blockquote><div><cite>Saiai wrote:</cite>He angled himself that he would fall to one side, clearing his targeted shoulder and thigh by throwing himself off balance. The long handle of the wrench slid through his palm and took the middle dart for him... As he hit the floor, as she drew in close with her next attack, he snatched up the machine gun the wrench-headed guard had let fall - and opened fire in closed space.</div></blockquote><br/>Alhanda saw, and in her forward lunge, she had little time to react to Arget's sudden fall.  She did, however, let her left knee suddenly buckle, preparing to take her full weight on that one.  Her arcing arms drew downward.  This boy was good - a dead-drop was the best way to avoid her throw.  She wondered distantly where he'd been trained as her knee came down, connecting with the hard, tiled floor.  Something beneath her armor gave, and pain shot up her thigh, but she saw his hand coming up with the machine-gun and didn't even flinch.<span style="font-style: italic">Get close, get close,</span>she thought without thinking.<span style="font-style: italic">Guns are no good up close.</span><br/><br/>Her arms were still swinging downward.  Using that momentum, she twisted her shoulders and fell across Arget's body, bowing one elbow slightly outward at the last instant to strike as close to his solar plexus as she could.  The gun was right beside her chest armor when it went off, but she was beside it and not before it.  The noise and heat of the three-shot burst filled her senses, but her higher arm snatched down and tore the gun from Arget's hasty grasp, hurling it away.  Her right knee came down between his and slid sharply up into his groin.<br/><br/>A quick shuffle had her fully armored weight atop Arget, her legs pinning his, her hands clamped around his wrists and pressing them to the floor.  She looked down at him, her face just out of his snapping range, betraying a smug, victorious grin.  Darkness glinted within her emerald green eyes.<br/><br/>"You lose," she whispered.  Her hunger was suddenly there, expanded into a ravenous need as the energy drain from her fight with Chiro began to take effect.  She licked her lips gently, allowing a few droplets of saliva to fall onto the young foxboy's face.  She glanced up and down his thin body, a bit disappointed.  She doubted this meal would sate her.  Her fangs bared and a low growl of lusting desire rumbled from her throat.  A quick dart in, a twist and a ripping recoil, and she would have his neck torn and spread across the tiles.<br/><br/>But at that moment, a piercing smell reached her nose.  She had a mere instant to recognize it-- sharp, acrid, and very, very close.  Chiro--<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Mag, as she pursued Chiro, could scent her mistress ahead.  Chiro was barreling straight for her.  Beneath her mistress, she smelled a young human with a spicy tang to his odor - vulpine blood, not a lot, but there.<br/><br/>Chiro was maddeningly out of her reach as he closed the distance to Lady Alhanda.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>"I don't think any of the stations used humans," said Maeve quietly, responding to Kitten.  "At least, none of the ones in Sombquist did."<br/><blockquote><div><cite>Seru wrote:</cite>Sherra holds Maeve to set the blanket over the three of them, looking towards the bovine. She looked like she had been through hell. "You alright, hun?" </div></blockquote><br/>Maeve looked over at the young feline woman, trying to manage a reassuring smile, but failing as the image of Lanner's gnarled fingers on her body flashed before her eyes.  She shook her head gently, her eyes shutting, trying to blot out the sight... and the feelings.  Feldana nuzzled her shoulder.  Maeve whispered, "I wish none of this had happened."<br/><blockquote><div><cite>K-Bach wrote:</cite>"All right... so Clent Station's supposed to be safe... you were right, Maeve," Dreamer said softly. "Try to... get comfortable back there. We don't know how long we'll have to drive, or through what... uh..." he trailed off as he drove around the corner of a corn field and spotted the three bodies strewn across the road. "Uh... stay down, you three."</div></blockquote><br/>Maeve looked up, as if she could see Dreamer through the sleeping bag, then hastily pushed Feldana down, trying to flatten the little calf's silhouette and looking at Sherra with fear in her eyes.<br/><br/>Neither Kitten nor Dreamer could hear or see anything outside the car.  The immediate area was absurdly tranquil.  A gentle wind rustled the near-silent strands of grain and shifted the hair on the dead bodies as the uncompromising sun continued to beat down from the cloudless sky.<br/><br/>As he drew closer, the body on Dreamer's far right began to look familiar.  He could recognize the hair color.  The body shape was feminine, and bovine.  After a closer inspection, he knew her -- Heifa, the cow that had picked him up alongside Lakran Hereford, now so long ago.  Heifa, dead with a hole in her skull.  He couldn't recognize the other two.  From where he was, it just looked like they'd been shot and left in the road.  Drying blood in the dirt told the story - they'd been captured and eliminated in the revolt's early hours.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Janus and Fenson eagerly returned Heretic's shakes of their hands, smiling with amazement.  Iln's magic had cured him totally!  As he asked about scissors, Janus looked puzzled, and pulled out his switchblade, wiping off the blood on his shirt.  "I got this," he said.  "What do you need scissors for?"