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♡Teal♡

She calmly approached the small table, taking the initiative

Xu Dráo

Xu looked at the young man with the cybernetic cat features and gave him what she believed to be a reassuring smile. "The DJ is right. Not every problem can be faced directly or indirectly with violence. Sometimes, all it needs is a bit of acting to get the job done and espionage requires a certain amount of guile to fool one's enemies. You are a skilled actor and your age plays into your favour. You can bluff your way with your words and people will believe it. You can play the role of a guard and they'll believe you are one of them." More to that but if he can find the confidence within himself, he can play to his strengths. "And your fame can be used to your advantage." She expected someone to cruelly shoot her words down and grind them into dust. The young girl grabbed the device. "Keep that safe and out of sight." She told Teal. Not the one I would have trusted to handle it. Still too young. Same with the boy. May pose an issue with getting into bars. "Eliminate the management via diplomatic or peaceful means and use as a fob." Sensible. Winged Terror could be used as an alternative but would draw too much attention. Lady Luck is defensible. Easy to attribute to gang violence if we have to use the violent methods. Less risk for myself with this.

"Full access to our systems? That's a big ask Fade Out. Not to mention one hell of a risk to OpSec. You better be able to take care of yourself." said Atlas. Some ash fell from his cigarette, he stomped it out on the floor. "Hardly gonna hand over a bar because we asked. But if we explain things they might let us crash, being blown up's bad for business. May need to sort out riff raff to prove we're trustworthy or something but..." Atlas shrugged.

He rubbed his hands together and looked over the group. "I ready to head when you are."

♡Teal♡

She held the device in one hand looking at it, though her own thoughts were interrupted by Xu's nagging. She kindly responded by flipping the middle finger and giving her little more than a side glance

Then after a moment she called out "Atlas" holding up the device to get his attention first before tossing it to him once she was certain he knew her intentions

Anton Atlas
Atlas held his hand up and grabbed the flash drive mid-air. "Thanks." He put the device safely into one of his pouches.

Àlfvor

"Well, I'm ready. But, uh, let's avoid calling the 72 a gang, alright?" He crossed his arms, but the troll didn't seem too bothered. "Think what you will of us, but you're not going to gain trust by suggesting the 72's the same as the Black Dogs or those other psychos." Àlfvor eyed up Fade-Out, who had continually lumped the 72 in with 'the other' gangs of Ven-Lo.

"Hell, I'm pretty sure the Iron 'Angels' and Glow Nation would rather be called a 'movement' or something, rather than a gang, ja?"

♡Teal♡

"Ja?" She raised an eyebrow out of annoyance

"The lot of em are just degenerates an' scum" she said with a mode biting tone "I don't care what ya gotta say.. Some of em would've been better off dead when the bombs dropped" she looked at the Troll dead on with a glare, making it unmistaken who her next line was addressing "We can at least agree on that" By some extent showing she treated her bias with the 72 different than with other gangs or psychos

She shuffled a bit in her stance, relieving some of the pressure off her feet from standing "Anythin'else" addressing back at the group, and not at all in a voice she would towards Fade Out

Anduroth

A grave glare was what Teal's comments earned from Anduroth. "I know you do not have practice working in a team, but antagonizing your partners is a poor way to start," he told the girl. He knew the members of the 72 to be agreeable enough when yielded to. "We survive together or not at all. I am ready to leave if you all are."

Lady Luck

The group departed ground zero and made their way together to , luckily without incident. As Fade-Out described, it was a literal hole-in-the-wall, with the front door being a built into a concrete wall leading down into the underground complex that was the bar. Faint bass thumps could be heard from outside.

Near the entrance sat a male human, his form illuminated only by the bright neon lights decorating the exterior of the bar. He was clutching his side, and a pool of blood was slowly forming at his point of contact with the ground. Though he sat with his legs drawn back and one arm over his side, the group could tell he was quite large and athletic.

Teal approached, always being the bold on. Her travel attire back on since leaving the DJ's hideout. Noting the large man amd blood, she stood across from him, her hand already placed on her revolver from underneath her poncho "Bad night?" she said nodding from underneath her bandana towards the bar's entrance

Àlfvor

Seemingly content with the girl taking the lead, Àlfvor simply stood back and watched.

Xu Dráo

Xu was used to the sight of people bleeding and as cold as it was, she elected to not help him. It would be a potential drain on her resources and it could raise questions. Or deep beneath her exterior was a cold hearted killer. Or both. "I'll find us a table." She knew that their presence would be hard to ignore. Maybe, posing as a group out for a drink will bypass any issues relating to our size and equipment. She began to walk up to the entrance whilst keeping an eye out for any signs of trouble.

Anton Atlas
Walking into a bar which they were told had a less than friendly clientele, after seeing a man sitting outside bleeding out without so much as investigating was a terrible move. But it was the Faustian's terrible move, not his. Atlas didn't care enough to stop her. Let her go in. If she gets shot, we'll know they aren't friendly.

Atlas drew his .223 pistol but kept it by his side. He wanted it at the ready if a fight broke out but let Teal deal with the wounded man. "He even alive?" Atlas audibly pondered.

Gramsci

She moved in swift motion, but maintained a pace behind the rest of the group. She always left enough space to bolt if something went wrong. The eye garbs had been restored as soon as they had left the safehouse. Her golden lenses peered through now, searching for danger, safety and paths from and towards. Her left hand maintained a nervous preoccupation with her right forearm, darting through the metropolis in a group like this wasn't something she was used to. Groups like this were asking to draw the wrong sort of attention to themselves.

Reaching the bar, she slowed. Her gaze darted to the wounded man, and she pronounced a step back. In her head, she rapidly charted all the possible spots of cover in near vicinity but didn't move for them.

This gaze slowly made it's way to Xu's figure, as she entered into the bar. It seemed like a terrible idea, but like Anton she didn't care enough to stop it.

"Don't know." She said with a lack of empathy "Fresh wound, moderate blood lose, clutched side. Could be alive.. Could just be unconscious"

She pointed off towards the entrance that Xu so blatantly strode to "Bout to find out why?" saying basically what everybody else thought: better her than me. Worse comes to worse, at least they'll know why someone is outside at death's door

Lady Luck Interior

Xu descended into the Lady Luck on her own. Almost immediately as she cleared the threshold into the bar, she was greeted by the sounds of guns swaying and being aimed, as well as an almost incomprehensible torrent of frantic shouts.

The scene was rather simple; two sides to a standoff, split between the two sides of the bar, centered among a most peculiar centerpiece. In the very middle of the bar's main room was a row of three slot machines, each of them repeatedly coming to a stop and then restarting the reel once again. The faction on the right side of the bar wore varied outfits of many different kinds and was composed of people from various races, seemingly lead by . The opposing group on the left side were mostly human, and their similar outfits of ragged sports jerseys and loose jeans indicated that they were members of the Black Dogs.

"What the [&@%!] is this, Grim? You got some friends coming to muscle in on us?" shouted the supposed leader of the Black Dogs, a younger than leather-sporting man opposing her. "You've got one chance to fix this, and you know you can't do it without our help."

'Grim', the aforementioned human man from the right side of the standoff, leaned out of cover from an overturned table and spat a wad of chewing tobacco before giving a retort. "[&@%!] you, Medusa. You know as well as I do that if you don't get your toadies on the machines, we're either all [&@%!] or you're cheated out of your prize regardless. I don't know who this clown is, but she ain't here for me." he shouted, then looking over to Xu. "Bar's [&@%!] closed! Unless you happen to have a bomb squad behind you, you'd better turn the [&@%!] around real quick."

Of the twenty-two guns in the room, six of them were now trained on Xu's head.

Lady Luck, Exterior

The wounded man coughed, adding a bit more blood to the scene as he did so. Anyone with any modicum of medical experience could tell that he had blood in his lungs, and without advanced medical equipment he was too far gone to save. Finally he spoke, weakly lifting his head to look at Teal. "Black Dogs.. snuck bombs into the slots... days ago... tripped the detonator, now... now if it goes all sevens... whole bar goes up... in flames..."

Another cough, another spurt of blood. The dying man struggled to take in another breath, and tried to speak again as his eyes glazed over. "They want... want a surrender... or they... won't defuse... [&@%!] maniacs, gonna die with... the rest of us. Picked the wrong bar to... bounce for."

The man finally slumped over, dead. Lady Luck awaited the group, unless they wished to examine anything else before accompanying Xu.

Àlfvor

"Damn. Well, I'm going to look for a backdoor. They might just start shooting as soon as they see me."

Àlfvor circled around the building to look for another entrance.

♡Teal♡

She moved her foot a bit, to avoid the spittle of blood he was coughing up. After he was done, she moved forward, going down to one knee as she pressed two fingers against his carotid artery on his neck checking if there was a pulse or not

Meanwhile she shifted the weight of her rifle on her shoulder. "Atlas, right." She nodded in his general direction "That .223 clips?" Noting in observation the cartridges around his waist, far too large for any pistol, and not as easy to hide "Take point with me?" She didn't wait for confirmation, making snap decisions one after the other "Someone follow the big guy"

Xu Drao

Upon entering the bar and walking into a standoff, Xu knew she would not be able to handle it. It would be quite hard to overcome the odds when six of them were pointing their guns at her head but she did gain some intel and knew that with the right tactics, they could kick out the black dogs. She remained silent as she slowly backed away from the rom whilst keeping her eyes and ears out for any signs of attack aimed at her.

Gramsci

Her instinct screamed at her to roll back and find cover: she could make 100m in 13 seconds, 10 seconds to adopt to cover, 30 seconds to assemble her sniper rifle, 5 seconds to find her aim... She didn't like the way those numbers added up. Her left hand snapped against her right forearm, an upwards flex of her wrist prompted the compartment to pop open. The knife in her good, right-hand: 4 seconds. It was made of a black steel, about about 6 inches long, with a jagged flick at the tip, for tearing presumably. It was held first in her backgrip, and then in her foregrip--easier to throw, she decided.

She moved with Àlfvor, keeping sure to maintain the bulk of his mass between herself and the view from any corner they approached. The whole time she looked about for space she could set up in and fire from, to cover any entrance through the backdoor--or retreat, as it might have been required.

Atlas
Atlas shook his head. He holstered his pistol and crouched down, taking his bag off his back to retrieve the .223 SMG. "Walking through that front door seems like a bad idea. If you aren't walking into bullets, you're walking into guns trained on us." said Atlas. With his SMG out he put the rucksack back on his back. Once Teal was done checking the man's pulse, Atlas would check the mans pockets, hoping to pilfer objects of value. Maybe he smokes.

"Now the smart play would be leave, find somewhere else to hold up. Somewhere that isn't going to explode any second. But none of you seem to want to do that and, I can't deal with the gangs alone so..." Atlas shrugged. "Hells. Any of you even have experience with explosives? I have some but doesn't mean I can disarm them."

Teal stood up, clearly not even objecting to Atlas's quick-to-loot from a still fresh body. Not even gonna mention it "He picked this location for a reason" she said, referring back to Fade Out "Wanna be the one to tell him why it's up in smoke?"

Anduroth

Damn it, I should have acted quicker, Anduroth thought as the bouncer drew his final breath. He might have been able to keep the poor man alive a bit longer with his medigel canister; he would have liked to hear more about the situation inside the bar. But then again, using your own medicine on someone else was a fool's move in Ven-Lo these days, no matter the reason.

"I do not know much about explosives," said Anduroth, "But I think we may not need to defuse the bombs... if we can defuse the situation. The Black Dogs will take care of the bombs if they either get their surrender, or are convinced to give up. If we can find a way to make the latter happen, or to snatch the bar from their hands if the former happens, then we do not need to be the bomb squad ourselves."

(( With the cancellation of Freedom Radio, I'm going ahead and posting my 'Design Document' detailing the plot I had in mind, copied from a Discord conversation... ))