TIME July 2nd (continuing) LOCATION The storm drain, then the street outside the Copper Pan
BACKGROUND:
A ruptured pipe had flooded the breach room and, for the moment, stopped Mikael’s rampage from reaching them directly – but the Agents were still trapped below Get Stuffed with an unconscious Caleb, a seizing girl, and a door that wouldn’t lock.
WHAT HAPPENED
Crowe finally wrestled the breach door locked as the water stopped. With Raven keeping watch over the children – Jay Sun in particular required active management, lest he skewer someone, himself, or his own strange helmet apparatus – Krusha started hoisting Janice up toward the storm drain above. Crowe went first, sliding down into the sewer proper to receive the children as they came down.
A voice at the drain’s far end complicated things – someone had climbed down to lower a sunrod into the shaft. Krusha passed the rope to Raven and started up himself, calling out that they were Agents. The echo and distance swallowed the warning; a crossbow bolt grazed him before his second attempt landed, and the Chuza Collections worker on the other end – who’d taken him for a mole in the dark – apologised at length once the message finally got through. He went to secure a proper rope for the children while Raven, left below, rigged a thunderstone trap on the door handle using rotten rat fat as an adhesive, in case anything came looking for them the hard way.
Krusha reached the top to a scene already in progress. Mikael had cut through several Nesterrooks and their dogs and was finishing off the last few as they tried to flee. The Chuza Collections crew cowered behind their cart. Krusha called on KemerLexi to put the brute down – and got nothing, whether from the god’s indifference or Mikael’s own resistance, it was hard to say. Below, Crowe and Raven kept the children moving toward the exit as a KemerLexi beacon sounded somewhere above. Three Agents rounded the corner, batons out, hesitating until Krusha’s rank got them moving in to help.
Mace and batons alike barely scratched Mikael.
He slammed the last Nesterrook into the wall of the Copper Pan, paused as if he’d spotted something, and broke off entirely – making straight for a dock worker frozen in confusion at the corner of the building. A single blow shattered the man where he stood. Mikael paused again afterward, rubbing at his own eyes, before the Agents pressed the attack and finally landed a few blows that seemed to actually register. He answered by smashing one of the responding Agents – Jeff – hard enough in the chest to collapse a lung.
Krusha tried, and failed, to talk Mikael into surrendering.
He broke and loped off down the street parallel to Get Stuffed instead, past a scattering of stunned civilians. Rather than press a fight that clearly wasn’t working, Krusha called it off, sent the two remaining Agents to shadow Mikael from a distance, and turned to Jeff – stabilising the bleeding first, then calling on KemerLexi’s healing properly. Jeff, still recovering, managed a smile on hearing that his own comrades were on their way up out of the sewers with a handful of rescued children in tow.
Crowe and Raven emerged from the drain heading straight for Get Stuffed.
Krusha warned the Chuza Collections crew to stay well clear of the storm drain if repairs meant going anywhere near it, and to keep an eye out for Dr Griffiths – and his brother.
EXTRAS.
OPEN THREADS
- Mikael has fled, badly hurt, with two Agents shadowing him at a distance.
- Five children recovered so far: Caleb, Janice, Jay Sun, Alia, and one more still unnamed.