((OOC: For Tarin, Lee, Sebastian, Slate, Lenna, and Shin. Continued from Freedom Isn't Free.))

The path up to the central levels was made more difficult by the lack of elevators. In their haste, whoever had blown the main generator had taken out every lock, lift, and camera on every level of Hell. They were down to mood lighting now, climbing stairs in a reddish dim. Lenna blazed the trail through plain gray corridors, and over metal bridges overlooking lower levels. Guards were scattered here or there. Unconscious, or dead. The first rush from the Resistance had been effective. The second rush from the escaping prisoners, even more so. The effectiveness reduced the journey to a leisurely walk. Every now and then, she turned to check if the blind Asian and his friend were following. Every now and then, she caught sight of mutant prisoners scaring guards away.

Shin stumbled here or there. Whenever he did, he picked himself up again. The one good thing about some of the corridors in the camps was that they were small. He pressed a hand against the walls, and made his way. At one point, Lenna's lead on them broke the 'five foot' range. Shin gripped the side of the metal bridge, and looked down. His head spun from the distance. It was like a Collosseum. Epic fights were taking place below. Lenna called for them to catch up. His focus rose to the end of the walkway, and the last flight of stairs. Shin scampered to oblige.

After what had seemed like ages, Lenna stepped through the doorway, into the area of the 'main yard'. She turned to look at the following pair with a dutiful glare. "We're here," She announced. Her voice was muffled, amid the shouting. "This is where we're to meet up." Her focus returned to the activity beyond her.

Guards, beating prisoners. Prisoners, beating guards. Horrible things. It looked like maybe, she'd get to use her gun after all.

Hooray.

Slate faithfully lead the way towards the infirmary, taking them along the small hallways; those that didn’t run adjacent to any cell blocks. He suspected such areas would be high traffic, at the moment. This way seemed largely deserted: now and again he heard sharp and sudden commotions nearby, but they never seemed to be coming from dead ahead.

Then Lee’s hand was touching his arm.

>> "There's someone up there."

He allowed her to take the lead, and took up a silent position at her side just before the hall’s turn. The infirmary was very close by: they only need to take a left, here, and go another ten meters or so.

As they waited, he finally heard the footsteps. They were approaching the corner hesitantly, as if wary of what might await. That did not help much: both guards and prisoners had good cause to hesitate, just now.

The man rounded the corner in a blaze. Quite literally. Small balls of blue flame danced above his hands, ready to be thrown at any threat that dwelt just out of sight.

“Oh,” was his reply to seeing them, followed by something in Romanian. It was somewhat puzzled, somewhat scared, and somewhat hopeful all at once. If Slate had to guess, he would translate it as “Do you know what the (crude word) is going on?” And—for his words to Lee, specifically—“Are you with the Underground?”

She was clearly not a prisoner, after all. She did not smell.

The man juggled the balls idly between his hands as he spoke. A nervous habit, perhaps, or simple joy at having his powers back.

Blink.

Ah. So the Underground had taken out the collars. Yes: that would make sense, and explain what he had been hearing.

Tarin, Slate stated, half expecting his own collar to be triggered by the single word. Blissfully, it was not. I am with your wife. We are headed to the infirmary. Are you there?

He did not know how far his telepathy would carry; had no way of knowing, really, that his range was far larger than this simple compound, with its mere seven levels. He did not need to know such things, though, for it to work.

Several floors above, Tarin would hear the Kabal Leader’s voice in his mind. Perhaps a bit more quietly than usual, if he was standing too close to a certain Adapted.

Lenna obliged. At least to the point where she was going to lead them to the place where everything was going down. That was good. Lee would be there, Tarin was sure of it. Lee had to be there. It was a mantra, keeping him clinging to an edge of sanity he’d been holding on to for quite some time now without even realizing it. How had Lee ever managed to do it? Especially with her powers working based on proximity. She’d said they’d touched her on purpose to activate the collar. Tarin knew what that was like now, and his hands nearly shook with rage as he followed Lenna through the corridors that would lead them to Lee.

He was lost in his thoughts, and glad when he came back to them that he’d been moving with people instead of alone. Tarin had no idea where they were, but as they walked out on a metal bridge, he looked down and saw absolute chaos. It was too high for him to get down into the melee, but that was the main yard…a place Tarin had been on several occasions during his stay in the camp. That’s where the resistance was…that had to be where Lee was.

Lenna had slowed, Shin had stopped, and Tarin took the opportunity to call on four of the spirits he’d grabbed before their group had started making their way through the compound. Down he sent them, into the fray with very specific instructions. Mental pictures of what the guard uniforms flashed in his head, and even more specific pictures of what needed to happen to them followed. As he, Lenna, and Shin started moving again, he could see what was happening through the mental link. He’d done it once before, in Colombia, and this was similar. Only here, Tarin had done something he’d never done before. He’d given the spirits complete freedom to act as they wished within the parameters of his instructions. They were going to do things their way, and Tarin didn’t need a picture drawn to understand that it wasn’t going to be pretty. He also didn’t care. It might have been the last load of bodies he’d taken down to the incinerator, or the last time a guard had laughed as he held the button that controlled the flow of electricity into Tarin’s body…but at some point, the guards had stopped counting as people.

The prisoners, resistance fighters, and guards in the melee wouldn’t have seen anything at first, and then the spirits would have materialized, each directly above their very own guard. The first was simply grabbed with a hand under the chin and another on the back of the head and sped towards the high ceiling of the cave before being dropped. The second didn’t have it that good. His head was grabbed as well, but wrenched to one side, then pulled up…and completely off. Tarin was used to the gore, but suddenly glad nobody else could see the spray of blood that followed that action. The third spirit simply materialized inside a guard, who summarily erupted in a bloody spray. The final spirit followed the example of the first, dropping his guard from the ceiling of the cave. When they were finished, more instructions followed, and the spirits moved on, dispatching of any guards in their way and looking for Lee. Hopefully they’d find her, surround her, and keep her safe until he could get there.

They’d moved a considerable distance while he dealt with the spirits, and Tarin was shocked when he found himself coming up level with the area where the spirits were still working their way through the crowd. How many lives had they saved? How many lives had they taken? Tarin didn’t know. He pulled four more spirits from the throng that had gathered to follow behind him as he made his way towards the main yard. Off they went as well, with the same instructions as the first quartet. Eight was all, all Tarin could do with his powers. It had to be enough. So absorbed was the Medium with his thoughts, and directing the spirits, that when the telepathic sound of Slate’s voice rang out in his head, he gasped and stumbled. It didn’t take long though, for the words to sink in and for joy to explode in Tarin’s chest.
Lee was there, and she was with Slate. Tarin closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated, all else forgotten as he formed a message to send back to Slate.

Lee’s with you? Is she alright? We’ve just gotten to the main yard. Things are a mess out here, and very dangerous…be careful and don’t take any risks. If it looks dangerous, find somewhere to hide and we’ll come get you. Don’t ask questions if you see a guard, we don’t have time.”

Lee was with Slate, he’d be able to heal her if anything happened. There was no need to allow the spirits to continue their bloody search for his wife, but as Tarin looked out over the chaos, he spotted one of the guards who had bullied him the most viciously beset upon by two spirits who started pulling his limbs from sockets with sounds that sounded vaguely like a cork being pulled from a champagne bottle. He let them continue, the guards had earned this after all, every last bit.

Sebastian fell. His descent did not take very long; two and sixty seven hundredths of a second, to be exact. (If seven stories was approximately equal to thirty five meters and gravity still accelerated a body at a rate of nine and eight tenths of a second per second.) But who was counting? Certainly not the falling unicorn, who only had time to wish the glass had been bullet proof and mentally utter an obscene oath against the ancient Olympians. Certainly not the guard he landed on, who had had considerably less time to prepare for a unicorn dropping out of the sky on top of him, especially since he had been rather distracted at the time by a spirit that wanted to rip his head off. Certainly not the spirit that had been preparing to decapitate the uniformed man, but he was already dead and wouldn't have cared to move even if he had known that it was raining four legged, single horned mythical creatures.

The unicorn lifted his head from the tangled pile of human, spirit, and mythical beast limbs. His forelegs were twisted at a very unhealthy looking angle. So was the neck of the guard beneath him. The spirit, unharmed, evaporated from beneath him with an angry hiss of silvery steam. Stupid unicorn had ruined his fun. Stupid unicorn was too busy gasping for air as his lung knit itself back together after it had been pierced by one of his own broken ribs. This was why unicorns were not supposed to fly. They didn't land particularly gracefully or in very convenient locations.

All around him, the battle raged. Blood splattered across his white coat. Screams tormented his sensitive ears. His legs, his ribs, his lungs, his whole body throbbed with pain and burned with icy cold. His energy was being wasted. There were so many people that would need that healing energy and he had to use so much of it on himself. Stupid.

In this form, he couldn't even move. A unicorn with two broken legs was not going to get far. It would be about eight to ten minutes before his bones could knit themselves back together well enough for him to walk on them. If he shifted back to his human shape, he could at least walk within maybe five minutes. Gods, it sucked to transform with broken limbs. Or in the middle of a battle. It was not worth it for the extra three minutes of mobility it might provide him, he decided.

The unicorn laid his head down on top of the guard's chest. For now all he could do was play dead and wait until he had healed. The blood that had splattered on his coat would help in that regard.

When they reached the main yard, Shin squinted his eyes.

Nope. Everything was still blurry. It wobbled inordinately in his field of vision, like looking into fun-house glass. Shin grimaced, and grumbled to himself.

"Fricken adapted." She was taking out his sense of sight! He thought maybe he could get away from her, but from the way things sounded right now, he didn't think it safe to stray. Fricken irony. Did Shin use the word 'frickin'? He somehow thought he used to swear an awful lot less... or maybe, he hadn't had reason to. But now, after the camps, and what these Romanians had done, Shin didn't have much patience to be polite. He didn't have the urge to run from the lady with the gun, and he didn't have the urge to see what was going down... all for the best, really. It sounded pretty morbid.

"What's that sound?" Shin asked, as one of Tarin's ghosts did something unsavory to a guard.

"Victory champagne," Lenna quipped. Shin flinched as a bullet exploded from her barrel, straight on through an approaching guard's chest. The man doubled over, and fell to the side.

Shin rubbed his ears sourly. "Warn me before you do that next t--" Another gunshot cut him off. Something went limp. "--ime..."

"Eh?" Lenna glanced at him.

Above the group, something shattered on high. Her eyes rose towards the falling speck. The gun in her hand lowered. She'd never seen something like that before... a short while later, something went splat.

Shin tilted his head. "And what was THAT sound?"

"A falling unicorn, kid... a falling unicorn." Lenna trailed. And he didn't look happy. Or healthy. The unicorn lowered itself down onto the guard, and closed its eyes. It was majestic. For a moment, her eyes hung on the bloodied form. Then, a shout rang out.

A guard ran towards them with a scream. Lenna's eyes swam across the battlefield, towards the voice. She'd been distracted. The guard had a hand raised high with an electric baton ready to strike. She turned her gun to face him, and he... stopped. He fell to the side. A single pale blue triangle hovered where he'd stood. She looked to the Asian. A bead of sweat rolled down his cheek.

"Was that you?" She asked.

He nodded. His eyes were still closed. "I didn't need sight to pinpoint that guy's location..."

Lenna shrugged.

Lee was standing just on this side of the corner, not having quite gone around yet, waiting tensely as she felt the person's energy on the other side growing stronger, closer to her. Crouching slightly, poised to spring the moment whoever it was rounded the corner.

Only to have the person turn out to be another mutant. Lee hesitated, though she was still wary. At least until she heard the man speak. And thanks to the Dragon Speak gem she still had, Lee understood what the man was saying, and asking of her.

She simply nodded at first; she was with the Underground. "And what's going on is that you're getting out of here," Lee replied in Romanian.

With that, Lee looked over her shoulder toward Slate. "We should keep moving," she said as she started moving once more, finally turning the corner. Though, Lee realized as she started moving, if this fire throwing mutant stayed near them, it would be both a help and a hindrance: that extra little bit of energy would most certainly help her, but having that much energy near her could make it harder to feel other people approaching.

Slate did not understand, or truly attempt to understand, the conversation Lee had with the Romanian man. He was rather busy with his own thoughts, as it were. She is unharmed, Slate replied.

>> "We should keep moving."

"Not that way," Slate corrected simply. "Tarin is now in the main yard. This way."

Judging by the recent power outage, they needed a stair case. Those, unfortunately, were only along the main halls. Slate lead them, as well as their recently acquired tagalong and his nervous juggling act, back the way he and Lee had already come, and down a new corridor. The dark, narrow space opened into a dim view of a short metal railing and a long drop.

A blur of white, red, and hooves fell past.

Slate thought it had a horn.

He blinked, then turned to the right. "This way," he repeated. The staircase was ahead. Tarin was below. So was his mentor, apparently.

They were down on the main level now, or at least what Tarin guessed was the main level. The mental communication from Slate had energized the Medium and as he and his two companions made his way across the increasingly cluttered floor of the cave he defended…and offended with renewed vigor he wouldn’t have acknowledged possessing just a few hours before.

Getting to the yard hadn’t been difficult compared with some of the other things they’d done so far, and Tarin had been distracted by the influx of images from the spirits he’d sent ahead to do as much dirty work as possible. He knew now that they weren’t going to find Lee, and he’d adjusted his instructions accordingly, but still they wreaked havoc on any guards they could find. Adrenaline did wonders, and while Tarin was pretty sure he’d collapse when all of this was over, his nerves were sustaining both him and the spirits, and that was just fine. His mental questions weren’t unanswered, either. Lee was safe, at least for now.

Shin’s question as a guard was not-so-neatly separated from his extremities caught Tarin off guard. It hadn’t occurred to Tarin that Shin would have that much trouble seeing. It also hadn’t occurred to Tarin just how violently extreme he was allowing the spirits to be. Lenna answered, and Tarin winced a little, ”Something like that.” he said, wondering for a moment if he should issue a command for them to pull back. Something stopped him though, before he sent the silent instruction. The spirits had been in possession of their free reign since Tarin had linked with them, and he had just admitted to himself that he would start to tire soon. The expenditure of energy it would take to lay down the law simply wasn’t worth it. He only had to turn his head to see the guards doing what they seemed to do best to solidify his resolve. A mental command later and the body of a guard who had been soundly beating a mutant inmate was being separated from its body. At least until a unicorn fell on it.

Tairn’s eyes widened at the sight, he only knew one unicorn, and surely there weren’t many more running around. Assuming the horned quadruped was indeed Seb, Tarin looked up and was shocked at how far his friend had fallen. Glass littered the ground where he had landed and he struggled to get to his feet for a moment before simply laying down and closing his eyes. Stark fear shot through Tarin at the sight and he wondered for a moment if his friend was dead…then he remembered Sebastian’s other power. The man was a stronger healer than even Slate. He had to be resting…waiting for his healing to kick in. Tarin turned to Shin and Lenna, just in time to see the former use his powers to bloody advantage, and the Medium was shocked. Somehow he hadn’t expected that level of violence from Shin. A wry smile marred his face at the thought that he had no trouble believing it from himself.

Chaos really was starting to reign in the camps, and Tarin’s eyes drifted to the prone unicorn, then back to his companions. Everything else was going to have to wait, ”We need to get to Sebastian and guard him.” and turned, making his way in that direction, simultaneously pulling the spirits from the melee and instructing them to form a perimeter around the fallen unicorn. If this worked, their group would be one powerful member stronger. If not…well, it simply had to work.

>>”We need to get to Sebastian and guard him.”

Sebastian. The... guy she'd met beforehand, who'd organized this prison break? He was the unicorn? Oh right. Of course. Forgive her for forgetting in the heat of the raid.

"If he fell from that height, he's already a goner," Lenna muttered as she reloaded her gun. The magazine fell to the floor, and a new one took its place. Her modified Beretta 92FSs were outfitted with flush-fit M9 18-round 9mm magazines. Her first still had plenty, but the one in her hand... well. She'd been shooting quite a bit, lately. Her eyes rose to Tarin's back as he moved towards the fallen beast. She sighed. "What's that thing's power, anyways..."

"Healing," the Asian muttered. He stalked off out of her range.

Lenna rolled her eyes. If that thing healed itself, the best place for her was as far away from Sebastian as she could get. She'd cover them from a distance. She drew the second weapon from her holster, and took aim on another guard.

"Bang."

"How is he?" Shin murmured. He slipped through the perimeter of spirits, to look at Sebastian. The unicorn was covered in blood. His fur was matted with it in some places. His leg was bent... it looked like it had been broken. Shin cast a glance over his shoulder at the battle going on. Now that he was free of the Adaptoid's 'whatever', he could finally see.

It was awful. Maybe, it had been better when he was blind. Shin's focus returned to Sebastian and Tarin. He supposed now, all they could do was protect Sebastian, and wait.

Sebastian was surrounded by fighting. On every side gun shots rang out, blood splashed, and bodies slumped to the floor. All he could do was watch through narrowly slitted eyes and wait. He was helpless to stop the fighting, helpless to heal the injured, helpless even to find his wife who was the reason he had orchestrated this chaos, this massacre. The word felt dirtier in his mind than the sticky blood that stained his fur. This mission, intended to be a rescue, an evacuation really, had devolved into a bloody fight that would leave several hundred dead.

He should have known better. He had known better and he had done it anyway. Though he had not personally killed anyone (except for the guard he had landed upon) every one of those lives lost felt like they were weights hung around his neck anchoring his head, and his heart, to the floor. Someone fell on top of his hindquarters and didn't get up again. The literal weight seemed small in comparison to the weight of all the other dead that were figuratively piled on top of him. Sebastian was too miserable to even try to move out from under him.

He hoped Ghost has already escaped. The thought that she might be caught up in all of this was unbearable.

Heels and ankles appeared in front of him and rather than scuffling and moving, stayed as if they were standing guard. Likewise, more feet flanked his sides. He was surrounded. Sebastian looked up to see if he knew these people who were suddenly standing watch over him. He did not. Why, then, did they stand sentinel around him as he healed?

Through an opening in the crowd he glimpsed two familiar faces (though more obscured than usual by facial hair and dirt) coming towards him. Shin and Tarin. That explained his guards; they were spirits. In all likelihood they were spirits that he had caused to die. Did they know?

Lee was moving already when she heard Slate's voice, telling her not that way. She frowned as she halted, turning to look at Slate. Then she blinked, the frown deepening in confusion. Hadn't Slate said that Tarin had been working near the infirmary as far as he knew? So then why did he suddenly know like this that Tarin was in the main yard.

Oh well, Lee turned to follow Slate as he made his way back the way they had just come. With the fire-throwing mutant following. Luckily, they turned into a different hallway before much longer, which ended at a railing.

Just in time for them to see something red and white falling past them. Lee stopped and blinked again. What the hell was that, she wondered. Surely it couldn't have been a person, right? Not being that white, right?

Before Lee could figure it out, though, and before she could really look over the railing to try and figure out what it had been, Slate was turning, leading them toward the right. Getting to Tarin at that point in time was far more important that trying to figure out what had just fallen when she was so far above the landing.

It didn't take long to reach the stairs, and definitely did not take too long for them to make their way down, opening up into a much larger area.

It looked like hell on earth. Fighting was everywhere, guards and mutants were running all over the place, fighting each other. Injuries and death were all over the place. But Lee couldn't see Tarin anywhere. He had to be there somewhere, right? So Lee started moving forward cautiously, eyes and her siphoning watching all around her as much as possible. She'd know if someone came close to her, but unfortunately, danger could just as easily come from a distance.

They reached the main yard. It looked precisely like it had sounded, from the stairwell: like people dying, with no true cause. The mutants should not have been imprisoned here in the first place. The guards should not have consented to work here. The resistance should be leading people out, and only neutralizing threats as necessary; the human threats should be finding themselves dark shadows to cower in, until their former captives were gone.

Instead, there was fighting. Revenge, and self defense, and a very mutual sort of loathing. What Slate found most peculiar was the smell. He had known that blood had a smell, of course; he'd had occasion to smell others' before, as well as--unfortunately--his own. He hadn't known that it could coat the air like this, though. The back of his mouth tasted metallic. He swallowed.

Lee was moving ahead, cautiously. Slate hung back a moment, in the relative safety of the stairwell, giving his eyes time to scan the assembled crowd without allowing most of them to see him.

The main yard was simple chaos; his eyes skimmed over pairs and quartets of fighters, of solo men and women fleeing, of a cohesive circle of defense--

--His eyes went back to that one. That is when he saw Ms. Lenna shooting people. Hmm. He decided not to ever mention the issue, if she didn't broach the subject. He thought he saw two familiar beards, as well.

"Over there," Slate instructed, catching up to Lee and gesturing towards the circle with his own goateed chin.

Their present path would take them straight towards Tarin's defensive ring. To get there, they would cross paths with Ms. Lenna's aura.

Look to your left, Slate said into Tarin's mind. He would see his wife coming towards him, and (less importantly, no doubt) his employer behind her.

It was unlikely that any of them would see the guard who fired the stray shot. He was dead soon after; it had been a fatal shot to miss.

He would not die alone.

((ooc: Lee, tell me if I need to rewrite anything! Seemed like a good time to set things up...))

Things were deteriorating, things were deteriorating fast. Outside of the little shell the rag-tag group had made, absolute chaos reigned. Tarin looked around, suddenly empathetic with the soldiers in war movies he’d seen. Was this shell shock? Small explosions rocked the cavern they were trapped in, and gunfire exploded in small bursts everywhere. Tarin looked to one side and saw a soldier mow down a mutant who couldn’t have been older than her mid-teens. To another side a mutant had shifted into some sort of large, muscular cat and was ripping the arms from a guard and beating him with them: his own spirits were making it rain blood and random body parts. Everything moved in slow motion.

Tarin cast a look over his shoulder at the unicorn who was still healing on the ground. All the surface wounds were gone now, and Tarin was completely at a loss for what to do. He spoke, ”Sebastian? What do we do now? How many of these people can you heal? How do we get out of here?” he was yelling, but it seemed like the words were stuck in his throat. Someone else needed to take over…someone else needed to lead. Tarin turned back to the carnage…Lee was out there somewhere. He almost took a step forward, but looked back at Sebastian…something was changing. Tarin held his ground.

>>Look to your left.

Tarin didn’t need to be told twice, his head turned and his eyes scanned the crowd. They moved past the carnage, past the blood and gore, until they landed on the one figure in the masses that made him think that everything was going to be okay. ”Lee…” he whispered. Then the shot rang out.

How he heard a single shot in the utter chaos, Tarin would never be able to say…but as his wife moved towards him she suddenly stumbled a few steps forward, a look on her face that would be burned into his memory for the rest of his life. She stopped stumbling, a hand moving to her chest, and her legs buckled.

An utterly inhuman sound split the air and it took Tarin a moment to realize that it had come from him. His feet had started moving of their own accord, as well, and he’d already instructed a spirit to go after the guard who fired the unseen shot. Why was he moving so slow?

There were healers everywhere, Slate was there, Sebastian was there, surely one of them should have been moving to Lee’s side. They needed to make this better. Tarin didn’t take the time to look to them, and as he closed the eternity that seemed to be separating him from his wife he didn’t take the time to look for them either.

Finally Tarin came up to where Lee had fallen, skidding the last few feet on his knees, completely oblivious to the rocks that tore his skin, but completely aware of the dark stain spreading beneath his wife. Lee hadn’t moved, she lay completely still, folded in on herself with an arm draped over her face like she was sleeping. Tarin grabbed her by the shoulders, hauling her into his lap and failing to hold back a choked sob at the limp way her arm slid from her face. Why was there so much blood?

”Lee? Lee?! Look at me...please open your eyes...please...” he choked, reaching up a hand to push the hair from her face tears blurring his vision as he turned to desperately search the surrounding area, ”SEBASTIAN?! SLATE?!” he screamed, again surprised by how utterly inhuman the sound was. They had to come…they had to fix her. What had all this been for, if Lee died?

Tarin Brooks looked back down at his wife, cradled in his arms, and held her close, stubbornly ignoring the blood staining his clothes, her blood,"Please Lee..."

Lenna took two steps back in the yard, and squeezed off another round into a guard. It seemed, every few steps she took, a new one would pop up for her to mow down. It was target practice. She kept up the motion, reloading when she needed to, never stood still, and lost herself in the shooting range. She let the shells fall where they may.

Bang, bang, went her sword cutlasses.

Shame, she didn’t have a silencer, or earmuffs to blot out the sound.

It wasn’t until she heard Tarin’s shout that Lenna rolled her attention back to his group. He was holding something. Her eyes skimmed across his shoulders, over to the people next to him, and fell on Lee. Injured. Possibly, dead. She knew Lee. She'd shared food with the woman once. She was an alright gal. To be cut down in her prime like that...

A visceral growl left Lenna's throat, as she turned on the guards in the area around Lee, and started firing.

Cover Fire. It could have been that, or rage and reckless abandon. An ally was injured. Her killers deserved every bullet that came their way.