17060/7 of S.W.O.R.D.s, 5 of W.A.N.D.s

7 of S.W.O.R.D.s, 5 of W.A.N.D.s
Date of Scene:	09 February 2024
Location:	Secure Storage: Triskelion
Synopsis:	SHIELD agents and allies respond to a breach of the Triskelion's Secure Storage area, and discover it infiltrated by magical means. Various items are targeted for removal through magical portals, though most, if not all are secured (the TP is all safe). Richard and Nat get to play with big guns, Lara wields something that was probably once in a tomb, and a little Raven flies to Baltimore. In the aftermath, some of those captured are revealed as former WAND agents or consultants.
Cast of Characters:	Darcy Lewis, Natasha Romanoff, Lara Croft, Nico Minoru, Richard Stadler, Corben Kelly

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Darcy Lewis has posed:
The alarm is not a subtle thing. From individual offices to the gym and firing range, from the labs to the cafeteria, the alert goes off simultaneously throughout the Triskelion. Although it may not mean the same thing to everyone.

Like everything in the realm of SHIELD operation, there are levels of compartmentalization and secrecy. Even the alarms have classifications and codes. A code for lab containment failure, a code for bombs in the cafeteria (that one comes up weirdly often). There's a dozen for different flavors of security breach, from HYDRA to aliens and who knows what else. Among those, this code is seemingly quite generic: "Unauthorized Facility Access/Breach - Secure Stations & Shelter in Place". However, to some of the more senior agents, it is more specific:

Code 0084: Breach of the Secure Storage Facility. Elite Personnel Respond Immediately.

Which finds various responders to the alarm doing just as it and their training tells them. They've gathered, or are in the process of arriving, at the very wide hall that surrounds the storage (itself at the very center of the Triskelion). It has secure code-controlled elevators and exits out to other parts of the facility, both smaller personnel ones and large freight elevators. The whole thing is large enough to bring a vehicle through if necessary, speaking to the scope of some of that which is stored here.

So... why are they outside?

Darcy Lewis, who is standing there with a technician besides a large, imposing, and very much closed blast door, offers a frustrated explanation as she works: "Whoever got inside triggered the defensive lockdown protocols. They're in there. We're locked out." She's beep-booping on the keypad in an apparent attempt to reverse that. Being, among other things, a well-regarded computer whiz, the fact that they've locked her out in the first place is worisome. "They've engaged everything. W.A.N.D.'s wards, too. But I think I can get this down, dunno what's gonna be on the other side."

The panel, after a moment, makes a noise, and the door starts opening again. Inside, the usual huge spotlights are out, although the space isn't totally dark, there are moving lights, casting shadows among the various rows of storage racks.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
The alert has gone off, and Natasha Romanova had raced from where she was doing reports to reply over as quickly as possible to the lockdown area. She's got her standard equipment with her, stopping by on the armory to grab another load of gear and weapons to spread out amongst the rest of the responders. "Sufficient threat to trigger the protective wards is.." In an ideal world, the wards locking down and blocking something out is what they're supposed to do. But something powerful enough to not be thrown out with all the time, resources, and institutional paranoia that SHIELD had built up over the decades was not a good sign.

"What information do we have about what the hostiles?" She has a small pistol in front of her, and is ready to head in and breach with the others. She's going to take point as the door goes to open, moving to quickly cover the area with her weapon. She can only hope that a heavy hitter from WAND is available. If not, then things will be more difficult. But they'll make do.

She also has a set of flashbangs and smoke grenades in her palm not holding the gun, ready to put up a screen if need be. Of course, against something magical they might not be useful at all.

Lara Croft has posed:
As it so happened, Lara was in the gun range today. But not to shoot guns, she was in fact teaching a class on advanced archery in combat scenarios. Archery? Who would use archery in the modern world in a active combat situation? Well, Clint Barton, for one. Because of Hawkeye, SHIELD had a large supply of archery tech, and thus training others to use them effectively was part of the regiment that Lara had proven to be one of the upper skilled Agents there-in. She may not be on Clint's level of skill with a bow, but she's damn close, with a wealth of experience in tense situations too.

But, as she was helping some of the other Agents in the class, the alarm went off... as they tend to do around this damn building. With an exasperated exhale, Lara went to find out what was going on... and it eventually lead her to appear near to Darcy.

Dressed in a dark blue SHIELD jumpsuit, Lara is armed with a quiver of high-tech arrows on her back, and a compound bow of black and red held in her left hand, she's jogging toward Darcy.

"What on Earth is it... now?" The British woman is asking as her brown eyes sweep over to the opening doorway of the secured storage facility.

Nico Minoru has posed:
Is Nico one of the Elite Personnel?

Dressed in the standard WAND uniform, she was working on her prescribed calisthenics by a certain white-haired Russian when the alarm happens. There's a bit of a nose scrunch, as she lets out a soft sigh when she finds her own responder beeping. Perhaps she is one of the elite after all!

With that, she makes a quick mudra in her left hand, and her right arm reveals it's true form. No longer is it fleshy, but it is the black metallic magical prosthetic that happens to glow with a purple energy. With that, she takes in a deep breath to focus on where people are gathering.

With the sound of a -VORP!-, she steps through a swirling purple teleportal to glance around as she runs her fingers through her own dark locks. "Sooooo, anything interesting going on?" she asks somewhat sarcastically.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Consulting was sometimes a rather easy job. For Stadler, it meant getting a phone call, asking if he could take a look at some samples, some process. Sometimes a secure connection was enough, but others required a bit of facetime with some people in the Triskelion. Like today; two hours going over a particularly tough problem, and finally a quick check of a watch, gathering a brief case, and walking toward the exit.

And that was the end of the easy part.

The alarm going off wasn't one that would allow an evacuation, and hell if he was going to just sit in some shelter waiting for whatever happened to happen. It was almost worse than danger. And it didn't take long to head to one of the security stations and try his luck with a consultant ID, an active security clearance, and 20 years of honed command presence.

Which meant he would be able to jog to the opening of the secured area, a combat vest hastily zipped up over a dress shirt and tie, an uncomfortably new 416 on an assault sling in front of him quickly getting checked for a chambered round as he walked up to the rest of the ad-hoc QRF, Darcy looked at with a bit of concern as the doors slowly opened. "Wasn't able to snag goggles. Anyone object to good old fashioned flashlights?"

Corben Kelly has posed:
Whenever the Fates send something with any amount of urgency attached, when it's 'shit is about to go down hard and fast, lil boy', he always takes a moment or three to prepare before he heads out. That means stuffing his pockets with way more vials of powder and potions than he normally would. Good thing that his transformation into raven form doesn't leave him in his birthday suit and allows him to keep possession of anything that will fit into his pockets.

So now there's a big black bird perched somewhere out of sight watching things those inside the warehouse cannot see yet. He's been watching for awhile now. Decisions, he sucks at making them. Stay and watch or fly on in and warn those at the other side. The former might not accomplish anything but the latter could get him shot. He wouldn't have been sent here had he not been meant to accomplish /something/. Against his better judgement, he attempts to fly on through to the other side, all the while repeating an 'I really don't wanna die' mantra in his little bird head.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"That'd be a big fat zilch. Nothing. Nada," Darcy informs Nat, as she requests an update on the scenario. "And... I don't think they triggered the defensive wards in the sense of setting them off. I think they... turned them ON to keep us out."

Which is something that Nico may take notice of as she appears with them in the hallway, that there's a 'zone' just beyond extruding all sorts of magical energy meant to prevent entrance into the region. It's not, strictly, that unusual: WAND exists precisely so that SHIELD isn't totally defenseless against this kind of mumbo-jumbo, while they store various artificats of power in their government conspiracy warehouse. Just normally they're not meant to keep other SHIELD people out.

As Natasha takes the lead, Darcy very much swings back to take a more defensive, cover position at the door. As she will happily remind people, field work isn't her thing! She answers Richard: "Considering I'm trying to get the floodlights back on... I'd say go for it?

The SHIELD folk can do as they want, using lights on their weapons, optics, whatever suits their preferences. Whether via beams of light, IR, or anything else, they can make out the many rows of shelves, stocked secure hard cases presumably stuffed with alien technology, items of ancient magical power... and in one corner, boxes and boxes of spare toilet paper. The shelves and lock-boxes themselves have coded labels that track their contents, although the info on what is in each might be rather classified.

Amidst the dark shelves, they can see a few brighter areas, where strange swirling light casts near kaledescopic patterns out toward the entrance, broken by strange shadows from the shelves and other obstructions. There are several such 'glowy' zones, in different areas of the warehouse.

Corben, in his bird form, pops through one of the glowy light sources - a portal - in a far corner of the warehouse. Nearby, he can see several figures like those he was observing earlier, in dark military style uniforms with black hoods that cover their faces. Only a single one remains near the portal, while the rest are down one of the rows of shelves, loading a box onto a small cart, which they start rolling back toward the portal. One could imagine that same scene repeating itself near each one of the glowing portals.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara looks over the others that have gathered, before she watches them begin to move on inside the dark storage center. She's spent countless hours in this facility, as it is one of the primary drop off locations for everything that she has brought in from the field work she was hired to perform across the globe for SHIELD. Much like the others, Lara produces a small flashlight from her belt wrapped around her waist, flicks it on, and attaches it to the right side of her form-fit jumper. The beam of bright white light cones out ahead of her, providing her with a bit of extra help as she too moves on inside.

Her bow is clutched in hand, a screamer arrow is notched on the crimson red bowstring, and the English woman crouches just a little the further in she advances. With her senses on alert, she begins moving through the rows of stored items, past the toilet paper, and past a tipped over box that has a discarded 'Marshmallow Peep' box laying out in the open... Odd.

Advancing further, Lara hears something up ahead, and on one knee she peers around to see a collection of figures about twenty yards away. What they're loading causes her eyes to narrow, and in to her comm, Lara speaks.

"They're stealing some of my equipment." She tells the others on the network. "They've got some of my Dropa Stone containers." She further elaborates, as she tries to shimmy her way through a stack of crates to get a better vantage point.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Her pistol in front of her, Natasha Romanova quickly evaluates. Roughly twenty hostiles. Powerful enough magically to teleport through WAND's wards and enough information to know exactly what they're after and where it was. And how it was secured. That meant a high probability of inside information. Or that they were capable of bypassing the defenses almost cavalierly, which was just as bad if not worse. Natasha goes to orient quickly. Interesting, the groups were mostly after technological items. She goes to focus over the different seized items being taken. High tech weapons seized from supervillains and the likes of Hydra, technology from the Savage Land.. An alien bio-war suit.. And technology that had been 'recovered' from the Greys.

The 'Greys' technology was advanced, but not extensively moreso than anything on Earth. The alien bio-suit was extremely dangerous, and they had not fully discovered what it could do. The magical items were best left to the expertise of the others. Natasha goes to creep towards the attackers that were taking things from the Savage Land (non Rogue animal skin bikini) edition.

Whatever the technology was, theyhad seen it suppress mutant powers to extreme degrees, manipulate genetics on a level, and connection with the ancient supercomputers that maintained the Savage Land itself. She would go to maneuver towards them, going to ready a flashbang.. Pistols in front of her, moving to flank and get to a position where she could launch suppressive fire when the fight started.

Nico Minoru has posed:
Her eyes have been glowing the entire time. If anything, she's doing some major magical scanning, trying to figure out what's going on. "The portals are... weird. They're definitely not something only one person can create." Nico explains, grumbling as she does what she can to try to close them, but finds it not possible, at least not for now.

"Something's generating it. Think someone can look around for something that would be more 'glowy' than other things near it?" Because that's usually a sign of eldritch magics, right?

Richard Stadler has posed:
     With a curt nod, Richard activates the light underneath the carbine in his hand, rifle tucked against his shoulder as he proceeds forward, into the cavernous room, muttering something about 'hocus pocus'. He seemed to be surrounded by the stuff as of late, and he had been hoping that the problems at SHIELD headquarters would be either biological or tactical. Thaumaturgical was just right out.

Not that he wasn't afraid to show a bit of ignorance, turning his head slightly to the one wearing the Wand gear who had just... teleported in herself. "Portals? Is that what these are? Any idea where they might lead?"

He wasn't privy to the sort of gear that was hear, though the brief comm message from... Ms. Croft, he believed, indicated that some of it was known, and perhaps important. Or...

Maybe it was some British sweet he didn't know. The equipment here seemed to be highly classified to mundane emergency survival gear. He though he might have recognized a couple of boxes of humanitarian rations, in that salmon pink coating, but he wasn't sure. He was distracted by the targets that had appeared in front of him.

The light's flicked off from the rifle, as he moves forward more slowly, using the shelves of probably precious items as cover. His hand moves to the vest, reaching for a flashbang, before speaking lowly on the radio to Nat. "Lead, we attempting to detain? I don't think we can just let this go on for much longer."

Corben Kelly has posed:
Silent as he can be - and that's pretty silent when he's just flying - Corben glides his way to the top of a shelving unit to just watch and listen for a bit. Nothing useful in that regard. He decides maybe he should go find the victims of this apparent robbery. He'll apologize later if he leaves any mementos of his passing, birds poop, even transformed human birds.

Still perched on top of the shelf, Corben transforms back to his human form. His hand slips into his pocket to pull out a small vial. He uses its contents, a fine black powder, to paint his lips before he speaks, right into Richard's ear. "They're unloading the stuff at <insert warehouse dock location here>. I know you don't know me and having me talk in your ear right now is weird, but maybe I can try to go back through and keep an eye on the other side. Just don't shoot the raven if you see it, nod if that's what you need me to do." Why Richard? Well, he's a familiar face at least and how bad can a community college professor really be?

Darcy Lewis has posed:
The SHIELD agents maneuver into position. While the enemy probably knows they can expect incomings, people like Natasha and Lara are very good at stalking quietly, and the sheer size of the warehouse, of the the shelves, provides opportunity for them to move up without giving themselves away. Each can get into a position where they observe the robberies in progress - Nat goes for the Savage Land stuff on the far side. Lara her own stone.

Richard shuts off the light, and likewise moves closer. He gets the unusual surprise of a bird-mage-man talking to him via magical ventriloquism, which is strange but probably not the strangest possible of outcomes, given the day he's having in general and some of the shit he's seen (ask about the alien tentacle lady).

Nico is certainly right, but the portal devices and whatever strange symbology are at the far ends of the long shelf rows, with the robbers moving back toward them, and thus between them and the group - although someone could possibly circle to the far side and engage there.

Lara Croft has posed:
With her bow momentarily stowed, Lara spent a few seconds quietly scaling a series of larger crate shelving units. Her graceful movements had her zig zagging up the side of the shelves, her booted feet kicking up to give her leverage, which allowed her body to simply roll up on top of one of the shelves lined with metal containers. From here, Lara slipped between several before finding herself a viable sniper's rest position.

Her hands reclaimed her bow, and a series of arrows from her quiver over her shoulder. One was momentarily placed between her teeth, that clamped down over the composite shaft of the arrow while she notched another.

Wasting no further time, not wanting to see her hard-earned gear get carted away through some damn portals, Lara launched a flashbang arrow right toward the middle of the group of figures attempting to bogart her stuff!

She spat out the arrow in her mouth a second after releasing the first shot, catching it in her firing hand, it too was quickly set, and fired, this one being a concussive blast arrow meant to devastate the hopefully stunned enemies.

"Engaging." Lara says finally there-after, perhaps a bit too late..

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
And Natasha goes to attack as well, clicking over her comm to announce her own assault. She goes to engage the targets in front of of her with a quick flashbang and then a concussion grenade. The combination of flashes, sound, and kinetic kickback is hopefully enough to send them flying and scatter them! Her gun goes to try and rapidly fire, going for precise rounds. She shoots to disable.

Shots are aimed at kneecaps, wrists, and shoulders. Their bodies in tactical gear will be too armored for torso shots to take down, and she wants some alive for interrogation.. And coherent enough for interrogation. And tehre's always the strong possibility that the invaders are extraterrestrial or other-planar in nature given the extent of the magic they're showing.

Presuming her pistol shots are at least slowing them down, then hse's moving to fire a Widow's Bite into the central cluster of them, trying to catch as many of them as she could in the electric blast!

Richard Stadler has posed:
     The voice at his ear is next to him; it's not electronic, and the ear happened to be the one without the earpiece anyway. He wouldn't be alive this far if he didn't quickly turn around, swinging his rifle toward the source... but the same goes for keeping his finger from pulling the trigger at empty air. It was enough time for him to get the rest of what that voice was saying...

What the hell was it with magical talking corvids? They seemed to pop up as frequently as city rats in the Bronx, these days. Apparently half the mages in the goddamn state had black-feathered wings somewhere in their repertoire, as Rick quickly sighted back to target, before nodding visibly."

"All on this net; we've got a third party in here somewhere. They're indicating material is being moved to a warehouse offsite." He notes, giving the location information provided by Corben. "Party is going to head through and try to gather additional information. As of this time, suggest not engaging any raven, crow, or other corvid flying about in here."

He reaches into his vest for the flashbang itself, the pin pulled and tossed a second after Natasha's. He was fighting from a different angle, and, as the grenade went off in a loud bang, he added rifle fire to the pistols and bows being used, single shots directed toward center mass.

Nat wanted people to interrogate, but there was still at least two full squads in front of them, and less than a quarter of that of guns pointed toward them. The odds needed to even quick.

Corben Kelly has posed:
Well, shit is hitting the fan. The people inside are trying to stop them from taking any more Bad Stuff outside. But who's out there to even attempt to make sure the bad guys don't run off with the Bad Stuff they've already managed to get out of the warehouse?

It's back to the birds again, and Corben chooses one of the portals beneath which chaos is happening. Hopefully said chaos will provide some little bit of cover for him on his way back out. Fly on through to the other side. He's immediately struck by the fact that this portal dropped him in a different part of Kansas than where he came from last time. He'll hit the open sky to lessen the possibility of being shot immediately.

He'll eventually land, turn to a real boy again and his lips are blackened once again. Unfortunately the tricks up his sleeve only work when he actually has sleeves. He can't use his potions and powders in his raven form.

It'd be nice to be included on those coms, but for now he has to use what he's got. Once more, it's Richard that gets the message, this time only because Richard is something he can hone in on now. "Portals lead to different docks through the city. Not sure where this one is."

Darcy Lewis has posed:
This was never going to end with a polite conversation.

Inevitably, things come to a conflict as the SHIELD agents (and friends!) move through the warehouse and, with several getting visuals on their targets without their targets knowing about it, launch immediate attacks from surprise. Each row's 'team' is split with two actually moving the item transports, a third surprivising from a bit back, and then one all the way back at their matching portal.

In the first instance, Lara's arrrow is silent until it isn't, with the blast disorienting all but the furthest-back of the soldiers and the follow-up dropping another. Likewise, Natasha's firepower is... almost overkill for her row's worth, the grenades stunning the nearer ones around the transport, and her follow up shots dropping them. There's not really a large group to target with the Widow's Bite, but she -can- launch it at the one in the back, with the electrical explosion shorting out whatever seems to be generating that portal. So apparently tech can beat magic, in that instance!

Richard likewise engages, taking the position nearest Natasha, which happens to be the 'mad science' row. Again, the flashbang gets those near the container transport, which is dropped, and his follow-ups drop them, one-two. But three, a short ways back, does get to shoot back. In Richard's case, he's probably actually thankful they only shoot at him with a gun and not, say, a wand of fireballs. But the automatic fire is probably enough to push him back into cover for a moment.

Near the portals, Nat's is down, but Lara and Richard's are still up. Something becomes clear quickly here, as their instinct isn't to fight valiantly in support of their allies: it's to run away. Seeing those further away dropped, the two walk back toward their own portals. Lara's (in the middle most row), pulls out and drops something on the way through the 'door.'

It looks like a grenade. It rolls along, goes blink-blink-blink like a grenade. And then it... well it sort of explodes, in a cloud of vile smoke. But there's no shockwave, no shrapnel.

In its place, instead, a red-skinned humanoid lurches from the cloud, roaring with hate. Did the grenade... summon a demon?

With those engagements happening, the other robbers, at the far end, start making speed runs toward their own portals, with their assorted alien loot.

Lara Croft has posed:
Just a moment after having fired off that pair of explosive arrows, Lara was up and moving. She didn't know if her positioned had been seen, but she wasn't taking any more chances than she had too, and if she'd learned anything in her 5 years of actively fighting enemies... it was best to stay mobile.

"We're in central secure storage." Lara says in to her com mic. "We need backup here immediately." She's saying, as she peers over a container to see the sudden presence of a red skinned, demon? what the HELL is that? With a shiver running down her spine, Lara pulls another arrow from her quiver, and sweeps her form around one of the containers, her long ponytail swaying behind her shoulders as she settles in on one knee, up off the floor on the 3rd rack of shelves.

Her fingers stroke over the fletching of one arrow, as she loads it on to the side of her bow. Her eyes scan what she can see of the other people on her team, but it's a bit chaotic in the moment.

Cursing under her breath, Lara takes a chance, and raises her bow up again, aiming down the shaft of the arrow toward the demonic creature down below. She unleashes the shock arrow, its pointed tip blinking with an electronic device that will deliver a stunning blast of electricity in to whatever it might embed itself in to, in this case... the chest of the red skinned creature left behind by the men trying to steal her stuff!

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Her own group of targets is down. So long as they're not going to rise up in the next few seconds, Natasha can concern herself with the rest of the melee. The group nearest towards her is the ones attacking Consultant Stadler, and they are the ones that Natasha goes to move to give some backup to. She goes to popup to fire quick bursts from her pistols over at them - trying to draw some fire towards her and away from him, or at least give him some moments to hunker down.

Then she's going to disengage along to try and draw them after her - hopefully leaving them a bit open! Even as she sees one of those demonic entities. Visually or actually? IT could be so hard to tell. But.. Natasha sees something bulky present on one of the shelves that she'd seen in archival reports. Bulky nineteen eighties attempt at paranormal disruption and isolation. A neutrino wand powered by a fuel cell of a small nucleoid reactor. Suffering from immense kickback and short range, considered experimental and temperamental, never used due to the bulky equipment, short range, and extreme inaccuracy. But.. Quite, quite effective from archival reports.

Natasha goes to rapidly grab at it from the shelf, checking the power system to see if it was still operational. Good. The fuel cells were supposed to have a half life of five thousand years so they should be.

Corben Kelly has posed:
Each portal to a different location. In Corben's mind, it seems a good idea to figure out those locations. Time for a game of whack-a-mole with a raven playing the part of the mole. Making every effort to duck, dodge and run away from becoming a whacked mole, as he tries to ascertain where each leads. It's the one in Richard's row that he disappears through though.... possibly never to be seen or heard from again.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
Forget Lara on the comms calling for aid. How about Darcy, who is still back by the door: "What the HELL is that? Is it literally FROM hell? Agent Lewis to all WAND personnel, I need help down here! Please join on location to contain extradimensional entity inside the facility..."

Meanwhile, yes, the demon itself. After that announcement of pure rage at its appearance, the creature looks around. There's some confusion in its gaze. Clearly, it isn't... normal that this creature should be here. Was it stored, trapped, bound in that weapon? Perhaps it has no true quarrel with SHIELD.

On the other hand, it is a creature of malevolence and sin, and perhaps that's excuse enough to wreak havoc, now that it is free on the world.

All of this is to say, shooting it is probably still the right idea. And Lara does, with accuracy. He's a big red boy and it's hard to miss. It hits, burries itself in that red flesh and the shaft crackles, indicating that the effect has gone off. However, as we know from Dungeons and Dragons, many Demons take half damage from electricity... It roars, clearly feeling it, but then reaches down to yank the arrow free, before turning its baleful gaze on the woman who -dared- attack it. Rather than rushing after her - she's so small and pitiful, after all - he reaches out for the nearer end of the shelf she's on and pulls the whole thing over, toppling it beneath her feet.

Meanwhile, Nat finds something juicy on a nearby shelf. Turning it on, there's a few pulses to indicate the energy humming there, dangerous and unpredictable. None of this stuff is SUPPOSED to be used, in regular circumstances. There's a reason it's locked down here, and not up in the lab where Darcy takes apart Shi'ar rifles. But desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures.

In the meantime, however, the demonic distraction achieves what might be its foremost purpose: two cartfulls of alien junk, the UAP parts and the Raptor suit, are pushed through their portals and vanish. The troops hurry after them.

And somewhere far away, Corben has a whole secret evil base to explore...

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Rick's experience had taught him that accurate fire was the best, compared to suppression; Taking your shots to take the target out, rather than keeping them suppressed for maneuver. That doesn't mean, however, it wasn't a sound tactic, as he finds himself reminded when the enemy is firing back toward him, and he brings his back to a set of crates he hope doesn't contain some bronze age nuclear weapon. It does give him time to eject the partially spent clip and feed in a fresh one, letting the nearly empty one clatter to the floor.

Yes, at least they weren't shooting at him with magic; both would kill him, however. At least he'd die to a principal he could understand instead of... what the devil did they do, turn people into newts? It was distracting enough thinking about, without having to give a choppy, annoyed nod at the voice speaking into his other ear again. acknowledging the intelligence. This wasn't the best time to be disseminating it.

He's back toward the target again, engaging those enemies that seemed to be retreating with those same aimed shots. He didn't begrudge them for leaving; there was an objective, and they were accomplishing it. They shouldn't mind getting shot in the back as they ran, in that ccase. Rick had an objective too-

"Grenade!" He yells into the comms, taking cover again from the expected burst of concussion and dangerous shrapnal... only to see smoke coming from it. Covering their retreat? Certainly nothing to rush into, sadly, but enough suppressive-

"Oh.. goddamn it-"

The first reaction was the Doom response; never assume that the demon in front of you was immune to good old fashioned full metal jacketed lead, and Rick does give it his all. The weapon's switched to full auto, and he directs rounds against the chest of the demon, the head, eyes, hell, the crotch, why not? A clip doesn't exactly last long in those circumstances, and he had already spotted a spilled crate of /something/ alien that had a stock, a barrel, and a trigger, the rifle firing it's last round as Rick hurled it down and rolled for it-

He didn't know if he /liked/ the feeling of that stock kicking back into his shoulder and a tight spread of three white hot bolts of plasma traveling forward at visual speeds toward the demonic manifestation, but, honestly, it was probably just what the doctor ordered.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
And then Natasha goes to rapidly hit the activation buttons on the neutrino wand's fuel cell, and the unit goes to power up. There's a rather audible hum from it as isotopes would accelerate, and the emitter would charge up over with energy. Natasha would remember what the reports had said of field testing with the unit. And she would move to brace her feet into the ground and hold the blaster.

Firm group, dug in and braced.. Then she goes to power it up and the hum grows MUCH louder. And she goes to pull the trigger to fire it.. And nuclear accelerated plasma blasts would go forth like anarchic lightning, blasting over towards the enetity in a chaotic loop! Natasha's made sure to not point it over at any equipment, and the blaster is horribly inaccurate.. But the unit is hopefully just as capable as it was when it was first constructed and designed. And at a range of a few dozen meters against something that it's designed to effectively operate against..

Hopefully it does. And also that the beam doesn't go wide and vaporize a few others in the room.

BWOOOSH-FZAPPT-HUM

Lara Croft has posed:
"Shit." Lara utters under her breath when she sees the big damn demonic thing marching toward her shelving unit. She doesn't have a lot of time to react either, but she does react none the less. Up in a low crouch, Lara starts a rapid crouch run across the top shelf until she feels it begin to lean, and outright topple. It's then that the WAND agent launches herself out in to the air of the secured storage facility. She releases her bow a few seconds in to the leap, allowing it to fall on its own, as she pushes her hands out, and slams in to the side of a lower shelf stack only one story off the ground. With a heavy thud, Lara rolls across the shelving space, her quiver of arrows scattering everywhere, as a breath escapes her with a pained groan.

Why had she run to jump rather than just immediately abandoned the shelves above? Firstly she didn't want to land overly close to the demon, and secondly... she remembered something.

On hands and knees now, Lara pushes herself forward, shoving boxes out of her way, causing the cardboard containers to carelessly scatter across the ground below, Lara raises up on her knees, rapidly knocking more boxes aside, pushing away storage coverings, and plastic wrappings. She frantically searches, until her fingers hit a polished wooden case, roughly seven feet long...

With her team responding to her over her comms, Lara knows they're too far away to actually get here in time to help, but thankfully she has a plan.

A few moments pass, and from behind one of the containers facing the demon, Lara stands up, clutching a tall metal and wooden staff, peaked by a violet crystal. With her cell phone in the opposite hand, Lara begins to speak out a series of words... in backwards language. Zatanna Zatarra had taught her a bit about this staff, years ago...

Holding the staff up, and out, the faster Lara speaks the words, the more the light from within the crystal glows, until finally a thrumming beam of magical energy pours out from the staff's apex, and Lara leans it forward, aiming it toward the demonic creature before her! The column of purple light buzzes loudly, then soothes in to a low hum that seems to absorb sound waves around it, as a deep rumbling and throbbing pulse of noise reverberates the entire storage chamber. Lara commands the staff, reading the text from her phone, her face and body lit up in dark purple light!

Darcy Lewis has posed:
For those in government work, this is definitely pushing the boundaries of normal experience. Richard unloads his weapon, but the bullets seem like little more than buzzing flies to the towering red figure, stinging more than injuring. And while that pain may not be enough to slow it down, as with Lara, it does seem to provoke and focus the creature's wrath. Looking toward the school teacher slash government spy agency consultant, it holds out its hand, gathering between its sharp-nailed fingers a gathering orb of searing hellfire.

Perhaps, after so many strange encounters, this one really will be it.

Yet before it can release that detructive orb, Natasha strikes first, firing a weapon that under other circumstances would definitely be a terrible idea, but in the moment is just what is needed. The kickback is indeed terrible, and the blast itself much larger than she probably expects it will be, even accounting for the worst. She will have some explaining to do to Fury about the hole it leaves on the far wall. But the demon is caught in the blast as well, struck and swaying from the impact, clearly feeling it in a way it didn't feel the arrow, the bullets. Yet it stands...

This gives Richard time to find his own toy. There's no shortage of alien guns that end up in SHIELD hands, but for them to end up down here, they definitely have to be higher on the Intergalactic War Crimes index than your average disruptor. He joins that triple plashma lance to Natasha's neutrino bullshit, hitting it from another angle, so that it's body sways first one way, and then the other, staggering back. This stuff clearly hurts, although it raises a question. Can science kill something like this?

Darcy might have thoughts, given that both Jane's work and hers is related to this topic. Is it a magical bridge to Narnia (OK, Asgard), or is it an Einstein-Rosen bridge? Is all magic just technology we don't understand? You know what? It's not getting settled today, because Lara DOES find the magical doohickey. And chanting that borrowed incantation to focus its power, the purple light grows stronger, brighter, until it is finally unleashed to wash over the creature. And this time? There is no roar of pain, but rather a brief, half-spoken objection in some foul arcane tongue before it simply *POPS* out of existence, leaving a brief cloud of sulfurous smoke, and then nothing at all.

---

Minutes later, the whole place is under secure lockdown, swarming with agents of various branches. Men in hazmat suits wave geiger counters in Nat's direction to make sure she's not soaked in weird radiation, while others blast the spot on the wall she blasted with hoses.

A few WAND techs crouch near the place where the bomb - they're calling it a 'Solomon Grenade' - went off, while others examine gear confiscated off the unconscious personnel, who are being taken into general custody. It's with the last, however, that the most concerning revelation comes. As one SHIELD agent pulls the hood off a man in cuffs, the WAND agent standing on the other side blinks in surprise. "Kevin?!"

They don't need to do ID checks, run anyone through the computer. Natasha's instincts early on about the inside job seem confirmed. These guys are ex-WAND.