I'm not ready for the dead to show its face, whose turn is it anyway?

[aboveandbelowme]

There are archangels moving in on the Kashtta Tower. Rather a lot of archangels, considering - when archangels move in groups like this, they're usually either hunting some serious prey, or going drinking. Most archangels do not go drinking quite this heavily armed

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[tenchinomatsuro]

There is Tachi.

Group of archangels. Makes the blood sing. The hunt is on the hunt is on-

Caution. Too many to take on at once. Integrate. Wait for opportunity. Always an opportunity.

Tachi walks up, knives out. Nothing to hide. Holds up hands. "Angel." Identifying. "Vengeance. Heard you were going after Torchwood. Want to join."

Let them assume.

[aboveandbelowme]

Georgia blinks, and eyes her for a moment before nodding shortly. She doesn't mind working with vengeance angels as long as their callings don't get in her way. "Fine. Stick with Sophie," she says, pointing to the angel in question. "Anyone else?"

[tenchinomatsuro]

Name. Probably commander. Acceptable.

Tachi falls in behind her, unsheathing a hunting knife. The prey is right here.

Soon. Soon.

[terriblexangels]

There are seven angels spaced in various groups. An eighteen-year-old who keeps checking her gun compulsively and sticking close to Sophie's group (she gives Tachi a rather unsettled look). She shakes her head even though it's a rhetorical question and keeps staring at her gun. She's been trained, yes, but she's never seen actual combat before. Keep it together, Alma.

Two female archangels- one dark-haired and the other blonde- stand around just grinning like crazed maniacs with rather impressive guns slung over their shoulders. Tara and Erika, just happy to be hunting and fighting. No questions there.

In another group, three young men- two of which are occasionally shoving each other playfully until the third silences them with a single glare. Mostly idiots, those two, but good fighters. And thankfully the third's far more competent. That would be Shigeru and Darien, plus Lionel- also ready for action.

And in the background just lurking, there is Isaac... Who is in a mask.

Don't question the creepy archangel in the mask. Really.

LOBBY

[aboveandbelowme]

[aboveandbelowme]

All the doors are locked. This is a problem, especially since... they could probably get the doors open or destroy the locks, but that would take more time than Georgia's willing to spend. The front door, though, is a bit easier to deal with than the others. And as irritating as certain kids with explosives are when left unsupervised, they do come in useful sometimes.

Sky gave them a couple explosives to use on the doors, just in case they had trouble getting in. Georgia fixes it to the door, sets the timer and then glances back to her kids. "Sophie's team goes in first. Take out anyone you find inside, we'll cover you. Ready?"

She waits until the kids have backed off a sufficient distance, starts the explosive ticking, and then springs back, grinning fiercely. "Fire in the hole!"

Around about a minute later, the doors blow inward, with what Georgia thinks is an inordinately bright flash of light. She has a suspicion Sky did that on purpose.

[terriblexangels]

The team storms in- Alma, Lionel, Darien, Shigeru among them, with Isaac trailing along behind, because picking which team to join was probably too much of an effort for a creepy archangel with a mask he just joined the first team that looked interesting. Or was going to get action first.

Lionel's near the front, near Sophie, because he's probably the only in the group with as much experience as Sophie does (besides Isaac, but no one really knows about him), gun at the ready.

"Hi, Honey, we're home," he quips, which is like asking to be killed, but they're archangels and these are just meddling humans who side with demons and cause problems for Romana. Arrogance is just something some archangels are going to have to get over the hard way.

[hey_capn_jack]

And, even after the cardinal law of Do Not Fuck With Jack's Team is dispensed with, there are two things Lionel should have known.

The first is that Jack knows how to make an impression, and dropping the biggest man there within seconds of them coming in the door is going to make an impression.

The second is that Jack is a very good shot.

He puts a bullet though Lionel's head, right between the eyes, and follows it up with two shots to the heart before he hits the ground, then rolls and steps back from the balcony. His revolver's been modified more than some men mod their cars and there's barely any muzzle flash, but given the sheer number of guns down there, blind chance could mean they hit him.

He doesn't have time to die. Not to mention that they might take the precaution of tying him up or disarming him.

Welcome home, he thinks, but a quip now would call attention to his position, and he's not going to give up his location for that kind of satisfaction. Just go, find a new position, weigh your options, see if you need to

HALLWAYS

[aboveandbelowme]

{Subthreads go under here, as everyone splits off into groups of death and doom.}

[that_damn_paki]

Over the comms streams Maya's voice, and Maya is settling into the rhythm of things. Disturbing as it is, she's finding that if she can treat it as a game, the kind she used to play with Sam-

Or it's a self-imposed Ender's Game. Sam recommended the book to her some time ago, and she remembered finding it terribly disquieting. But her job is keeping it together. She'll worry about what she's done - she'll worry about a lot of things - when this is over.

{"Jack, Malek, you're clear for about two halls in either direction. Jeremy, take the hall to your right; there's an archangel heading away from you down the hallway about... three metres ahead and to your right, after that. Daniel, there's an angel about to pass you by if you stay at that corner."}

Keeping track of all of them, navigating the confusing system of screens and maps in this building she's not entirely familiar with. But Jack was right about something - she can work with a bigger picture.

{"There are eleven angels in the building. Three are searching the second

[that_damn_paki]

And the archangels are making it onto the fourth and higher floors. Heading toward the spaces they're keeping Sam and Gwen.

{"Gene,"} Maya says. They might not like each other, but right now they've got each others' backs, and Gene is the only one with Sam. {"There's an archangel who will be coming down the hall ahead of you and to your right in about thirty seconds."}

[lionofmanc]

Gene's not happy. Hasn't been happy with the whole bloody situation, and it's only slightly eased by the fact that he's in on this. The moment he hears Maya's words, he motions Sam and Mat to a side corridor, clear as far as he can see it, giving Sam a Look.

Don't try and tough this one out, Sammy-boy. You're the target, not me. Now MUSH.

Him, he just moves silently and quickly as he can around the corner he just motioned Sam and Mat down, looking for cover. He's got his gun drawn, and aims right for where the angel should be coming. The moment he sees a figure...

He's giving one warning. One. "Freeze and drop the weapon, and you won't make a very painful mistake." Finger on the trigger, ready to shoot, but he's not to the point he can just shoot 'em down without a word.

CONTROL ROOM

[aboveandbelowme]

[that_damn_paki]

Maya is none too sure about this. Less than a week on the job and she's already in the middle of an assassination attempt.

She's in the control room and the door is locked down, and she's keeping an eye on the plethora of monitors in front of her. It's surreal, honestly - watching the doors blow in like a movie, and people pouring in, and one of them just falls, like he was dropped, and isn't moving-

She's seen crime scenes, before. She doesn't have so much experience with crimes or violence in realtime, and this is on a scale she can't quite process.

It takes her a few seconds to remember that she has a job to do over the knowlegde that this is real, happening in the building in which she's standing, and that somewhere blow her real people are killing and dying and she's the one who's supposed to tell them where to go and when. She swallows, steeling herself as a transmission comes over the comms

[that_damn_paki]

Maya catches her breath as Tachi takes out another one. "That's one more down," she says. "Repeat, two out of fifteen archangels down," and she's having serious doubts about this. If they're taking them apart this easily-

Then what Torchwood is doing is wholesale slaughter. And regardless of whether or not the archangels attacked first, she doesn't know of she can stand for that. Even if this is war.

[that_damn_paki]

There's a rising ringing in her ears, and Maya grabs a chair and sinks into it. She should have brought up a glass of water. Or a toilet, because her stomach is turning flip-flops and she's not sure how long she can keep her lunch down. Not that nerves were helping with that anyway, after hearing that Romana wanted to assassinate Sam, but-

A body. A corpse just came flying down from the second level and hit the first and its head isn't quite attached to its body and there's blood, pouring out of it, making a small ocean on the floor, and even though she couldn't see what happened on the second floor, what's happening in the lobby is well-illuminated.

She swallows. "It's- a third angel is down. And our angel. She was shot, she's not moving-"

AFTERMATH

[hey_capn_jack]

 

[hey_capn_jack]

Jack has moved the injured - mostly Mat and Gene - into an office with less damage from explosions than the one Sam and Mat took refuge in. He's checked in with his team - and oh, how good it feels to call it his team again - and while they report injuries, so far there aren't any fatalities. He's sent Malek off to bring Juliet and Tachi up so that Juliet can be treated without leaving her patient. And the control room is monitoring the archangels in their makeshift prisons.

This is what's going on when Maya checks in.

The comm lines are open. So when Maya says {"Captain Harkness,"} it should give Sam pause, because it's the perfectly reserved quiet tone that suggests she's going to take the next opportunity to make someone suffer and suffer dearly.

Jack, however, not being acquainted with Maya, just taps his comm. "Maya. All quiet on the upper front?"

{"The two archangels aren't doing anything. I think they've given up."} There's not much of a pause as she switches topics. {"I would like to come down to the infirmary."}

[definitivestep]

Sam's sitting on the floor where he can keep an eye on both Mat and Gene, his hands still shaking a little from adrenaline, and he's probably not going to be able to get that to stop for a while.

The sound of Maya's voice on the comm gets his attention, and he glances to Jack. Waits for him to finish speaking with Maya, and opens his mouth to... warn him or something, because that tone in Maya's voice is never a good sign. He's heard it directed at him, and he knows what usually comes after. But how, exactly, he's supposed to warn Jack about that, he's not sure.

He doesn't really get the chance to sort it out before Gwen strides into the room, looking both shaken and furious. "Jack!"

[hey_capn_jack]

Maya's warning signs might go right over Jack's head, but that tone is not one he's going to mistake anytime soon. His attention snaps up and he pulls himself up despite himself, with an involuntary first reaction of oh, fuck, what now?

"Gwen," he says, quite evenly considering he's about to get both barrels for something.