Swartz did not have his back for this. Having someone's back implied some level of mutual trust and consideration. Linely hadn't stepped up to that line. Ergo, while Swartz respected the fact that he was a fellow man with a badge pinned to his chest, that was about all he respected.

Exit blocked, check. So either accomplice confirmed, or their target had circled around street-side. Frankly, Calley thought he'd have smelled it if the guy had been up there, unless he'd found time to dose himself in enough bleach and floral perfume to clear his earlier reek.

So accomplice. Great.

First things first: Calley wasn't going to die here. Which meant he'd take a page out of his playbook, here and now: heart worm splinter in the bloodstream, check. Because he technically only needed one of his forms to survive this, and he was hoping this guy didn't have enough fire power to utterly incinerate him.

Step two: they weren't tracking anymore. No way, no how. And Rotts weren't much use against bats. Ergo: he stretched out his hand, and met his dog half's muzzle. In the next instant, a skunk dropped on all fours to the ground.

The bats were just about on them. Screw shooting, he only had limited ammo down here, which he wasn't about to waste on possible mindless minions, even if the concrete walls of this place didn't look like a ricochet fun-house. But there was something he'd very much like to know about their incoming friends: were they regular bats under the lose control of pre-training, like Linely said, or were they more directly controlled? Even if the Affirmative Action Promotion standing next to him had finally seen fit to share all he knew, a power growth could still trump that knowledge.

Calley, fortunately, had a definitive test in store.

The skunk turned, and did what skunks do. If they were normal bats under lose control, there was no way in hell they'd come close to that smell (which, thanks to sharing sense, was nowhere near as odoriferous to him as it would be to say, oh, let's just pick an example--Linely). If they were under the iron control of a telepath?

Well.

Linely had better start pulling his dead weight.

Linely turned to face the bats, they seemed pretty conventional to him, a bit on the large size, but not overly out of the ordinary. Their fangs were obvious, great! Vampire bats as well! Mutation wise, it was going to be difficult, as the animal nerves were pretty alien to him, but were there was a will...there was a way. One seemed to have...an old issue with it's wing? He tried to bring it to the surface despite the general confusion...it seemed to work, that was a bat down.

Linely had just reached Calley in enough time to see what looked like a ....Skunk appear before him? Linely had never seen a skunk before, in the UK, you saw them on TV, and in NYC they were apparently reasonably rare. So he was quite surprised to see his fellow officer use his powers to produce something that was ground borne.

"Schwartz? Is that a skunk?" He spoke in almost wonderment, almost like a child who had been shown something for the first time, and wondered what the use of it was. There were BATS approaching, plus it was likely that Johnson had an accomplice if the entrance hadn't suddenly decided to block itself! What on earth was his fellow officer doing?


Then the smell came... and boy did it smell, some of it was sprayed on Linely's trousers. The assault on his senses was present, even in the general stench of the sewer. The bats let out an awful screech from behind him, then started to fly away in the opposite direction.

"Never let me question your methods again Schwartz." Linely said , grateful that he wasn't going to have an issue with fangs seeping into his neck. Vampire bats tended to prefer sleeping victims, but that was an instinct easily trainable out of it. "I did manage to down one with my power, not sure what you want to do with it. It'd still be alive."