The woman was older but she certainly fought like a wildcat. Agnes ground her teeth, keeping her grip on the flailing woman who took a clumsy swipe at her new partner. However, between the two of them, they effectively had the woman caught in an impossible situation; she wouldn’t be released lest one of them released her themselves. With a command that her partner needed to move fast, Agnes held on, tightening her grip in an attempt keep her subdued, but not necessarily make her pass out; she was needed conscious.

So Agnes was appropriately surprised when after her suggestion, her new friend suddenly seized one of the woman’s hands and shoved the fingers in her mouth; that would earn her an odd look from now on. Agnes partially looked away, but kept her grip tightened on the agent until the woman next to her was done. Pulling the fingers free, she looked a little off-balance but kept steady.

>>"I'm going to be confused for a few seconds. Drag me away. Get us to the door. I might need you to remind me to use the code and what we're here for. Just as a precaution."

Agnes would have asked what the deal was but thought better of it. She nodded her head and watched as the other pressed closed to the agent, looking her square in the eyes. Again, it was all a bit unnerving but it wasn’t as if Agnes was going to stop any time soon. She was running a mission and stopping was not an option. Still, she didn’t have to watch whatever this was.

>>"I need you to forget, Maud."

She turned back to her partner who was staring directly into the woman’s eyes. Seeing the eyes vibrating was definitely unnerving but it seemed as if she got to the tail end of the ordeal because soon Sucker Punch had blinked and leaned back. A second to breathe and the two of them helped to lift “Maud” up to her two feet, dusted her off and left a very confused looking woman standing there, trying to regain her senses.

”Huh…” Agnes muttered. Stepping back, she looked over the two women and then noted just how spacey S.P. appeared. She then remembered what the other said and leaned over, nudging her slightly with her arm until she got her attention. With that she dragged her off towards the side door. ”Come on.”

Moving to the side door, Agnes stepped back and her mysterious comrade used the I.D. to open the door and step in, Combatant followed behind and softly shut the door behind her. Once they were inside, she held her breath for a moment. The last time she was in a facility like this, it had been with a full team and even then it had proved to be a harrowing experience. What was going to possibly await them now? Combatant shook the thoughts off and pressed on, only stopping when S.P. grumbled.

>>"Should have dressed as office ladies."

With a rare moment of levity, Combatant scoffed. ”You really think we can pull off ‘ladies’?” she asked. To be fair, Agnes had dressed up to go undercover before but she could scarcely stand it. She wanted nothing more than to rip off her fancy clothes for those that were more geared to someone of her personality. Still, she shrugged. ”At most it would have bought us a few extra moments and they would have our pictures afterward -- not ideal.” She scoffed. ”At least if we get caught and brainwashed, we can do it comfortably.”

> ”You really think we can pull off ‘ladies’?”

Noel's mouth was covered after she'd tugged her impromptu ninja mask back into place so her smile was hidden, but her soft snort was still audible. It was an acceptance of the reality of the situation. They definitely made better ninja than they did ladies. It was difficult to find blouses that fit Noel's traps anyway.

"Guess not." Noel chuckled at the idea of being comfortable for her brain reassignment. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

Maud walked these halls 20 times a day, easy. She wasn't supposed to smoke out back, but she knew that Jim unhooked the fire alarm to that door just so he could smoke out there. She figured it was safe if her boss had been the one to do the tampering. Noel slowed as they approached a cross in hallways. The back of the facility was mostly for holding and it didn't get a ton of traffic, but that wasn't true for the rest of the building.

"This is the end of the easy part. Get ready for things to get messy."

And if she was Svetlana where would she be? Noel could start licking doorknobs, but the risk and distraction probably wouldn't prove worth it.

As they rounded the corner, a pair of men were walking down the hall and looking pretty grumpy. Noel tried to play it cool and just keep walking, but once they pair looked up, they both startled and stopped in their tracks. Noel, too, stopped and followed the looks one of them was making in the direction of what looked to be a fire alarm. It was closer to them than it was to Noel and Combatant. She didn't like her odds.

> "Agnes?"

Noel got a quick blast of images: a rooftop, parkour, Combatant with pink in her cheeks that had nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with how adorable she was... if she wasn't so used to fastforwarding through other people's memories, she probably wouldn't have decoded that. But one thing was obvious. Batty and this guy had history.

"Psychic." Noel growled. The second man who had yet to speak made a mad dash for the alarm and Noel threw herself at him. Batty could deal with the other guy.

It was an unspoken moment but hearing the snort from the other woman actually made Agnes smirk a little underneath her mask. Really it was probably one of those rare moments where Agnes actually let down her guard around another person. Had the circumstances been different, maybe this would have been the start of a friendship, an extremely rare thing for Combatant to admit, but it would seem now wasn’t the time for it. As he moved through the halls, the seriousness of their situation weighed heavily upon their shoulders. They were in the belly of the beast and there was no room for error.

Maneuvering through the halls was strangely easy. As the two women moved, Agnes kept her eyes open, trying to restrain herself whenever she felt the unnerving sensation of someone being nearby. But she kept her fists closed and her eyes tight as he just continued to push on. She would have to follow her partner at this point because, really, she didn’t know this facility and judging from the other, she sapped up memories of some kind. She hoped it would be enough to find her friend.

They stepped out into a hall and Agnes turned to the other. Really she didn’t know which direction to go from here but it would seem that they weren’t given much opportunity to think on it. A glance down the hall and suddenly they were interrupted by a duo of men in suits. One was towering, muscular, and flaming red hair and a beard -- he looked like a trained bear someone dressed in a suit. The other, though, was far more familiar.

>>"Agnes?"

The rooftop. The sparring sensation. The kiss. The implication of it all began to crash down upon her as her eyes formed a solid glare of defiance. Again, this was why she didn’t trust anyone who pretended to like her. Because, of course, every time it would turn out to be a SUPER agent.

>>"Psychic.

”You. F**ker.” She took a step forward but was cut off by S.P. who seemed to be out for blood.

A growl on her lips and she watched as the brunette threw herself at the man who was running for a nearby alarm. Pulling a shuriken from her belt with a gloved hand, Agnes hurled it towards the man, not aiming for him specifically, but for the alarm itself. It should prevent it, momentarily from being activated, at least long enough for S.P. to tackle him to the ground.

Of course, that meant that Agnes’ dance card was now free.

The massive man charged at her like a bull from a chute. Agnes immediately switched styles in her head, to Aikido, strengthening her base and form. As the massive viking ran at her, Agnes narrowed gaze and immediately drove her fist out, catching him in the stomach and then following it with an elbow to the chest -- both punches were met with stone-like resistance.

The large man, his badge with the name “KRISTOPH” emblazoned on it, grunted and stopped only momentarily. He reared a fist back to drive it into her head. ”You hit hard, sweetheart. But I hit harder!”

Agnes turned, disengaging as she positioned herself so that his arm flew over her shoulder, allowing her to catch him by the wrist. Twisting it cruelly, she just grinned. ”Don’t call me sweetheart…” She kicked back, driving her heel in between the man’s legs, causing him to gasp and double over, onto her. ”...Princess!” With that she flipped him, over her shoulder, and sending him reeling back first into a nearby door.

Sveta had been locked into a closet for almost half a day now.
Half. A day.
In a closet.

Okay, so it was not exactly a surprise that they would lock her up, sure. She did send a text from Zelda's phone that somehow got out, and somehow SUPER found out about it. She knew that was her last card; as soon as Nolan found some free time between whatever kind of crap he got up to, he would stop by to bleach her brain blank. That was a given.
But a closet? Really?

SUPER's most promising power booster would have at least merited a lockdown cell or something.

Not that Sveta was complaining. The moment the sounds of struggle started up outside, she backed away from the door. If there was ever gonna be a rescue, this was it, and the door did not look like it would hold up long.

It didn't.

Kristoph's unmistakable bulk came crashing through the door with a grunt, and landed at her feet. Sveta stared down at him for a second, then up at the seemingly flimsy woman that had... thrown him? Not looking a gift agent in the mouth, Sveta aimed a mean kick at the guy, before she stepped over to get out of the closet. It only took her a moment to notice Noel, then she turned back to the lady that had just liberated her.

"Nice to meet you" she said shortly, whipping off one glove, before she placed a hand on the woman's skin.

Noel'd thrown herself at the big man who juked. That was good. It gave Combatant a chance to ninja star up the alarm and that put Big Red off the idea for good. Unfortunately, it put Noel up against the psychic and lined Big Red up against Batty. Despite what he'd done, Combatant had to deal with her man first. Noel had to keep him from raising the alarm, though it almost felt like the entire building shook when Red hit the door.

> "You look familiar somehow... Have we met?" When he talked, Noel saw it. They really had met. Or. No. They hadn't. She just remembered that they had. The memories fat like oil on water and when she shook her head, they were even less believable. Noel advanced and he danced back. Dangit, she needed him put down before he did something they'd all regret.

But... there was something in the line of his brow. The way he rolled his lips together... He made a grab for something at his waist and Noel threw her bag at his face. Her fist wasn't too far behind the duffle, but he managed to duck the bag and tuck his shoulder. That meant her trajectory was off.

She adjusted. So did he. The man ended up driving his shoulder up toward Noel's midsection and the memorymancer had to use her hands to catch him and keep his aim off. The big difference was that he hadn't grabbed a gun, as Noel had feared. He'd grabbed a phone. Noel had directed his hands upward so any shots would be fired into the ceiling and the floors above. Now it was just a dramatic way to show off that the man was inputting some kind of alarm code.

> "I really hate to fight X-men."

Despite tasting the veracity of his words, Noel still jabbed him viciously in the throat to cut off whatever thought had been brewing next. His eyes went wide, but it seemed that the damage was already done.

Alarms sounded. The hallway lights dimmed. Far off, the sound of steel sliding forcefully home signaled the slow cut off of their escape options.

Noel grabbed his shirt and pulled him in for a kiss. There had to be a way out of a lock down. There had to be.

While Noel scoured his memories, certain similarities kept popping up until suddenly the truth was unavoidable. They spoke at the same time, both wide-eyed.

"You are me."
> "You are messed up."

He was her if her job with the government hadn't fallen through, Noel realized. And this... this could have been what their universe was like...

He tried to shove her off and Noel tried to turn his arm into a chicken wing submission. Neither succeeded, but both were having a hard time focusing.

Noel needed more time! She needed to cut off their connection and do her thing intentionally and with purpose. And for now, that meant she needed to get the hell out.

"Somebody hit him until he stops moving!"

Agnes could feel her heart pounding in her chest. She was ready to break more bones, break in more heads. She was in the middle of a hive and all around her she could feel danger vibrating through the very floors, ceilings, and walls. She managed to dispatch on to the agents who was there but there was no way that they would continue to go unnoticed. She managed to knock out the alarm, but it seemed to be only a temporary victory as her partner found herself struggling with another man who could have easily passed for a sibling. It probably wasn’t worth getting into.

It was then that movement caught her eye. From the doorway that she had thrown the viking through, another woman came out, this was curvaceous and blonde. She was beginning to wonder exactly what other nefarious acts that SUPER was up to when footsteps drew her attention back.

From a doorway off to the right, another agent came out, this one having the time to whip out a telescopic baton. A snarled pulled on her lips as she was immediately on the attack, stopping his strike dead in the air, Agnes lashed out with a series of punches that echoed with the sounds of a chest cavity concaving. As the agent fell, Agnes plucked up the baton that had nearly fallen. She pulled down edge of her scarf so it was wrapped around her neck, revealing her face to both her new comrades and the remaining agent.

>>"Somebody hit him until he stops moving!"

Alarms. Alarms were going off everywhere. Steel doors were slamming into place, warning lights began to bleat like goats on their way to a sacrificial mound. And, through it all, was the unmistakable sounds of shouting and rushing feet. Agnes mind went into overdrive as she tried to think of what to do next. Would they even have time to get back to the door that they came from? What were the--

>>"Nice to meet you"

She turned, resting her dark eyes on the blonde who approached. A light colored hand pressed against her bare skin and in that second everything was absolutely still. Time moved so fast that it eventually ground to a halt, leaving her in a state of absolute nothingness, a space that only existed in the fraction of time that it took to breathe. For a second she feared that maybe, just maybe she was dying, that this was the end of her, for whatever reason. But once that breath passed, she couldn’t have been more wrong.

Eyes dilated, muscles tensed, a thin film of red began to sweep over her vision, leaving her looking for only one thing -- a target.

The first of those sacrifices came running up the stairs behind Sucker Punch and the man she wrestled with. Dropping the baton on the ground, Agnes pulled herself away from the blonde’s strange touch and aimed herself at the only thing that she knew she could aim at -- the agents. See, she knew what this feeling was, or at least a fraction of it. Whenever Agnes lost control, became too frustrated, she fell into a Berserker’s Wrath, a state of mind where all she wanted to do was win and she didn’t care who she hurt in the process. That was what she felt, but right now it felt amped up to eleven; that meant that the blonde and S.P. were in danger unless she tossed herself at the first enemy she came across.

It was horrid to watch. As soon as Agnes ran, she planted her foot on the Gage’s shoulder before she kicked off, launching herself at a trio of agents who ran in, guns drawn. Even a feral animal would have had a second thought, but Agnes was so far beyond any sense of self-preservation. The only thing that would quell the hungry beast that dwelled in her chest were the sounds of snapping femurs and the scent of flowing ichor.

Combatant was an animal. An inhuman warcry flew from between her lips as she tore into her enemies, fists breaking cartilage, elbows driven into sternums, and a heel driven into only the most sensitive spots but with no amount of softness applied. As those three fell into bruised and bloodied heaps, another small squad appeared from a doorway, a mistake that they would regret as their movement immediately set Agnes off into a flurry of attacks. In her red, red world, Agnes had access to everything, every fighting skill that she ever learned, even those that she forgot in order to gain a new one. She used everything, anything, and no matter the person who came up to her, no matter what weapon they carried, they all fell to her. A few were lucky, getting in a stab or lucky punch, one even took a chunk of her shoulder with a close quarter gunblast. But the minor healing factor she possessed was also kicked into gear and any wounds were healed in moments rather than days.

Another woman fallen, Agnes stepped over her whimpering body, covered with the blood of her enemies, the feral-eyed woman snapped her head around, looking for another target, fingers arched like claws. When one of her fallen made the mistake of struggling to get up, Combatant drove her hell directly into his lower back, dislocated several vertebrae. Even as his whimpers reached the most pathetic of levels, there was no sympathy in her eyes; after all, how could as Goddess of War feel sympathy for the weak?

The boosting effect was stunning. Sveta realized she did not even know what the girl's exact power was, but since she was too tiny to put a man of Karlson's size through a door, Sveta had a good guess that it involed strength. And they would need that to get out of here alive.

The woman went completely berserk. It was gore movie level of holyshhhhhhgetoutoftheway. Not that Sveta felt bad for any SUPER agents, really. If this was her breakout, she was going to get out, with or without help. But preferably with it.

A few steps away Noel was fighting her own fight... with a suit that was eerily familiar.

>"You are me."
>"You are messed up."

That made... so much sense. Also, so wrong, on so many levels.
So. Many. Levels.

>>"Somebody hit him until he stops moving!"

"Gladly" Sveta only paused to pick up the baton that was not being used anymore by its owner, on account of the crazy chick having broken his arms or whatever. The last thing she wanted was to accidentally boost Nolan, but she was happy to touch him with a ten foot pole. Or a baton, in this case.

The hit she landed on the side of Nolan's head came with a nasty crack. It was most satisfying. Sveta kicked him in the nuts as he crumpled, for good measure.

"We should take him. He knows things."

> "No. Nononon-!" Through the last words he got out before taking a solid hit to temple, Noel got a confused blast of memories: sad puppies, torture, a grandmotherly figure begging for her life...

Noel couldn't help but cringe at the hit that Sveta delivered. She felt it down the length of her arm where she had been wrestling to hold him still. She didn't normally empathize with people to the degree she was now, but it wasn't every day when you meet yourself and then help someone knock you out. She sucked in a breath through a grimace.

"Jesus, don't break him!" It was at that moment when Noel noticed the bomb that was Combatant. An agent hit the wall a few feet from where Sveta and Noel were standing and slid down to land on their neck. It was a literal carpet of fallen agents that Combatant was leaving in her wake. It took Noel a second to pick her jaw up off the floor.

> "We should take him. He knows things."

Noel didn't have to be convinced, she simply propped the unconscious agent up as best she could so that she could take his sidearm and phone and ditch anything else that looked like it would be traceable, even his coat and belt. The gun she handed to Svetlana.

"I think I remember hearing that you've had enough training to use that. Glad you're still in one piece."

Why did she discard his belt? The buckle was too shiny. Clearly a plant. She debated ditching the shoes too. Had she ever seen her agency stuff things in shoes? Unfortunately she couldn't remember and they had to move.

The Havenite dipped to maneuver Nolan across her shoulders and picked up her duffle. Combatant had paved the way. They needed to hurry and catch up enough to stay a safe distance away.

"You touched her...?" That wasn't an accusation, that was a thread of fear in Noel's voice. Combatant was scary enough without a boost. She swallowed hard, already knowing the answer. "I don't know what to do to talk her down, but for now, I guess we ride this out all the way across the rift."

There was going to be no stopping this time. Even in the back of her head, Agnes could feel that fear poking at her, telling her that this was it, that she was going to beat the entire world into a pulp and that she wasn’t going to be able to stop herself. In all honesty, it was always a fear of hers whenever she allowed herself to embrace the berserker; she fought and broke everything before her eyes until sheer exhaustion was the only thing that could stop her. But this time, it was different, she really and truly felt like she wasn’t going to stop.

Everything would fall. Absolutely everything.

Agents tried to stop her but to Combatant the world she was looking at was little more than a dream. She moved with utmost elegance, weaving impossibly between foes, ducking and striking, jamming her elbow deep into bellybuttons and at one point felt a man’s teeth burst inward by the straight-on punch that she delivered to his jaw. It was truly a terrible state but it was also an opportunity for three escaping women to take advantage of.

In her wake, the bodies of the whining, cringing, and unconscious were littered about in a path of misery that none would dare trend. Agents who came across it immediately thought twice about whether they should continue, and those who were brave enough to do so immediately fell to the wrath of the crazed woman who wanted only blood from them.

Agnes was unstoppable and onward she continued to push herself. As agents burst through doorways, she immediately sent them back through into piles. The air was filled with the sounds of her unwavering warcries and the further she pushed, the louder she got, and the more people kept pouring in to try and stop her. But there was nothing that would stop her short of death -- of course that was the route that the agents were going to take now.

Her arm looped around a man’s neck, Agnes pulled off a luchadore maneuver where she slammed the man’s head into the ground, knocking it into an awkward direction. Flipping onto her feet, she pulled a pair of shurikens from her belt and sent them careening through the air, delving straight into a pair of agents, between the eyes, as they were taking aim with handguns. When an actual bullet was fired and grazed her arm, the woman snapped her attention down the hall where a lone, female agent was shakily holding up her gun.

It was a sight to see, almost impossible. Agnes growled a feral growl as she ran at the agent. The lights in the hall flickers, casting a strange strobe-like effect across the rest of the room. She leapt, bouncing off the walls, rolled, snarling, and side-stepping gunshots until she closed the gap with a pair of horrific sounding punches that left the woman sprawled onto the ground in a twisted angle.

Pushing on, the woman just continued to growl and hit and slash until, finally, entering the penultimate room that would lead to an exit that Agnes took a harsh breath. She was kneeling down, straddling a fallen agent, her fist bloodied and sore from having driven it into his face over and over again. Slowly her true senses came back and she found her arm pulled back, dripping with gore. A shaky breath and Agnes snapped her attention up, confusion in her eyes as she looked around the unfamiliar room. The last she remembered was being in that hall and seeing the blonde.

”...t-the hell…?” she whispered, shakily.

Hitting Nolan was a tiny payback for the past weeks. Sveta had been dreaming about it, and hell if she was not going to enjoy the chance.

>>"Jesus, don't break him!"

"He deserves it." Sveta noted coolly as the other woman went berserk behind them, and Noel stripped her male doppelganger of all assets. Sveta took the gun when she was handed one.

>>"I think I remember hearing that you've had enough training to use that. Glad you're still in one piece."

"Thanks for the rescue." Sveta grinned. It was good to not be fighting alone anymore.

>>"You touched her...?"

"A little" Sveta admitted sheepishly "Who is she?..."

>>"I don't know what to do to talk her down, but for now, I guess we ride this out all the way across the rift."

"Sounds like a plan. Let's go." they walked, Noel carrying Nolan, as the other woman finally stopped breaking people and came out of her rage in a daze.

"I boosted your powers. We need to get out of here."

What had Noel's counterpart done to deserve Sveta's wrath? That was the question that rankled the former agent as she stepped over the fallen. Geez. She'd figured they would go for stealth, and that the s*** would hit the fan, but she did not at all expect this.

If anyone deserved it... but as the man on her shoulders proved, it could have been her laying on the ground here if things had gone even just a little different.

> "Who is she?..."

As it turned out, that was a very good question. Noel had thought she'd known the answer to that question when she crossed the rift to kill her. Now she wasn't so sure.

"She's... a friend. And an X. Apparently over here they're... different." That was more than a little obvious at this point. Noel tugged Sveta's shirt back when she heard gunshots ahead. Over the sirens it was hard to heard much, what was a little extra hearing loss like discharging a weapon in close quarters? Once there was only silence ahead, she went first. She'd played bodyguard for too long to just let those instincts go.

Around the corner, Combatant was kneeling over the bloodied face of what used to be a person. She was confused and as much empathy as Noel had for her disorientation, they just didn't have time for it. Sveta filled their third in with a terse few sentences while Noel went to the desk and found a set of keys to jam in her mouth. She tapped a few keys on the keyboard, flipped through the keyring, and stuck a key into the security desk. When she turned the key, the alarm stopped. A few more keystrokes and the heavy metal shutter pulled up from the door that kept the three women from the garage.

"This way, ladies." Her voice sounded too loud in the sudden silence after the alarm. She dipped again to pull a pistol from a fallen agent and ushered her friends into the garage. It all felt familiar despite her never having been here. Noel walked to the wall and typed in a code that unlocked a sliding valet keyring system. Every car that was checked into their garage was a key and a label. "Pick a car, any car."

Agnes had fallen into this before. Whenever she had thrown herself into the thick of things and allowed herself to go berserk, she became an absolute force. Nothing stood in her way. She could be squaring off against an opponent who was ten times her size and she would find a way to tear right through them and pull out their heart. It was a state of mind that Agnes didn’t like to allow herself to fall into but she knew that it had usefulness from time to time.

Right now the warrior was just a little scared to look back at the carnage that she had inflicted. She could remember the majority of it, but it was broken down into flashes, shards of memories only, and nothing more. It was like holding up a photo album and flipping through the pages very fast, she saw snippets, a face here and there, but nothing more. If the bloodied face below her was any indication of what she had done, she wasn’t sure that she could face that.

She wore her confusion like a comforting mask as she lowered her shaking arm. What had happened? She didn’t realize it but she had verbally asked this question to the air and was just as surprised when it answered her. A glance to the side, to the Russian blonde who was there, and Agnes eyed her cautiously.

>>"I boosted your powers. We need to get out of here."

Agnes gulped. A power boost? She remembered having access to all the fighting styles that she had ever learned over the years and now it was only those few that she knew she had. This was certainly something different to experience. She gulped, nodding her head that she understood and shakily pulled herself off of the clearly dead agent she straddled. Once she was upright, Agnes felt her world tilt and she had to brace herself against a nearby desk. That was a rather exhausting experience and now she was struggling to keep upright. Perfect.

A glance around showed that they were still in the facility but as she began to wonder how they would get out, the alarms suddenly stopped. She turned to see that S.P. took command of one of the computers and was furiously typing away at the keyboard when she killed the alarms. With that done, and with a set of keys in her mouth, she announced it was time to vacate.

>>"This way, ladies...Pick a car, any car."

At this point, Agnes wasn’t going to argue. She didn’t want to get left behind in this place -- plus she wanted to know why they had two extra members in this little party. They had come here to rescue one friend and now they had an agent that was stripped of several key accessories. He had run for the alarm, she remembered that much, but why was he being taken with them? Again, she wouldn’t argue -- at least not until they were someplace where she could safely raise her voice.

Leaving the car choice up to the other two, Agnes snapped her head back when the sound of footsteps began to echo in the lot. There, coming out of a pair of doors, she found two more agents standing a safe distance from one another. One was tall with cracked, molten skin, and the other looked like a normal housewife type, she simply held a gun in her hand.

“Freeze!” the woman shouted.

Mr. Lava just rolled his eyes. “There’s no freezing! Just shoot!” Mr. Lava was keeping a careful distance from the woman as molten rock began to flow freely from his hands. Clearly the woman with him was an Adapted.

A gunshot rang and Combatant quickly tucked herself down behind a car. Great. Of course they had to run across to last obstacles. She shouted from her hiding spot to her comrades, wherever they were. ”I hope you two are done shopping around!!!”

The unknown woman had plowed through SUPER security. Sveta wondered what she would have done had she kissed her. She was not sure she wanted to find out. She glanced at faces as they hurried along, but did not see a familiar one. Other than Karlson, obviously. Although some were quite unrecognizable.

>>"She's... a friend. And an X. Apparently over here they're... different."

"Yea I know." Sveta sighed, hurrying along with the gun in her hand. People were similar here, but also different. She was glad to be going home.

They made it all the way to the garage.

>>"This way, ladies. Pick a car, any car."

Sveta glanced around. "Well let's just take..."

>>“Freeze!”

>>“There’s no freezing! Just shoot!”

A shot rang out. They all ducked. Sveta took a look at the agents and swore. She was definitely not going near lava guy, and the other one seemed like an adapted. She fired off some shots in her direction.

>>”I hope you two are done shopping around!!!”

"Let's take dat one!" Sveta yelled at Noel pointing to the nearest car with a free escape route. They'd have to get Nolan in, start up the engine, and then jump in and drive away. The woman fired again, and Sveta returned a favor; this time, she went down with a yelp. Kristoph would have been at least a little pissed to know that his shooting range classes were paying off now...

That one? Noel ducked, for all the good it would do her, and nearly dropped Nolan. She had to stretch up to reach the keys while Sveta returned fire, but she was pretty sure she got the key for the correct parking spot. Noel hesitated before leaving the box of keys behind. She saw a few fobs that allowed for remote engine starting...

A car engine revved to life and the lavamancer split his focus between where the girls moved and the new, and empty, threat. It was enough for Muse to peg him with the gun, not enough to take him 100% down. Nolan got dumped in the trunk. He was probably safer for it based on the way Muse had whalloped him earlier. Everyone piled in and they rammed the car in front of them.

"I am not the best driver." Noel admitted as she put them in reverse and just barely tapped the car behind them. Lavaman was suddenly there in front of the front bumper, looking terrible and wholly worse for wear. Noel hit the accelerator and there was a distinct bump, bump and the smell of burning rubber. Maybe literally.

She popped a curb to avoid the deployed emergency barriers and plowed through a chainlink fence some 20 yards to the East of a checkpoint. Distantly, she heard gunshots, but they'd clearly been expecting them to go through the gate and not to be driving through a forest. It was bumpy driving on an unpaved surface at breakneck speeds, but somehow they managed it all the way to the rip.

All the way through the rip too.

Next week they would have something more substantial up besides the temporary tents and barriers and a few people that they probably shouldn't have plowed through.

Noel woven through a few streets to get her bearings and then found a place to parallel park and have a moment to freak out and see if they had any kind of tail.

"Let's never do this again." Noel rubbed her hands across her face. "Anybody out who wants out. Otherwise, I'm taking Nolan someplace I guarantee he doesn't want to be."