Operation Alpha

(Okay, thank you guys.)

Shade at first tried to fight against the ant's orders but eventually he gave in and lay back down. Shade listened to the wolf and nodded, "yeah you're right. I'm sorry, I just... just sensed Caen... he... we," Shade cut himself off after realising he was making no sense. Shade began to get nervous because he felt like the soldiers were coming; he felt worse after the ant confirmed his hunch.

Shade looked at his arm and shook his head, "no," he said to the ant, "if the soldiers are coming, I need to be on my feet and moving," he sat up in protest, "I'm sorry that I brought the soldiers to your house and barged in so rudely. However this is our problem and we need to sort it out, even if we're injured," Shade then proceeded to stand again, "because it's just and right."

The officers draw back a few steps from Shrike and Caen, but they continue to bar their path. One of the officers drops back to radio in this new development. The other teams begin to draw in towards the area more slowly and carefully at the sound of weapon fire ahead.


The wolf watches the ant as he moves to the window to survey the situation.

"Well... you should have no concerns about them. You aren't the one being chased." the wolf says.

He snorts softly after Shade finishes speaking.

"'Just and right'? I'm sure those people outside feel they are just and right too." he replies, turning and starting back towards the back window he'd entered through, "I'm sure they have plenty of justification too. So unless you want to give them more, we'd better leave."

(Hey, when do I go, again?)

( OOC: Post order is: Me, Froshana, DracNos, Storm, Blur, Shrike, Shade. )

(OOC: Alright, so now we're waiting for Froshana, got it.)

((Sorry for the wait there, kiddos, just been having a strange week.))

So the pair that Flame was watching appeared to be surrounded, oh boy. The armored guy had bust in and seemed to give the red hedgehog a pep talk a short time before. Flame had to chuckle a little bit. These two seemed like they'd be a perfect pair in a soap opera.

A soap opera full of guns.

There were several moments where the navy hedgehog's mind wandered off, briefly considering what a soap opera full of guns would entail. And particularly what role this pair she was stalking observing would play in such a thing.

Gunfire drew her attention back over and she could only assume from this distance that... well, it looks like the green guy had just fired off a weapon at the crowd of shields surrounding them. It didn't seem to faze anyone there, but then again they were probably trained to handle these adrenaline-filled situations.

Hm... Adrenaline... caffeine... coffee... Ooh, coffee.

Flame yawned out from the alley she was currently watching the situation from. She could probably run off and grab herself some coffee and not miss anything too interesting here. The hedgehog glanced over her shoulder. She'd seen a chain coffee shop she was fond of not too far off. It had been a couple of hours since her last cup. Her head nodded idly at this consideration. Seemed like a good enough idea.

One more look at the situation unfolding out in the other alley. It was hard to see much in terms of detail past the officers all blocking the alleyway anyhow.
Decision made, Flame turned and darted off, out the other end of the alley she was in and thus away from the action. She paused on an open street to refresh her memory of just where she was...

The ant drummed his fingers on the windowsill, his mechaninc face molding into what looked like discomfort. "Well..." He started, walking towards what appeared to be a cybernetic luggage bag, "... I am not... per se... Legally permitted to live here, and if any force of police were to find me here... I would prefer not to be in jail, thank you very much." He explained, loosely as the bag sprouted an antenna which scanned the whole room, a moment after, mechanical arms sprouted, and started picking certain objects off of the walls and shelves, he hefted a bag, which clinked and picked up the luggage bag, attaching it to his back. "This much of an uproar will definitely result in a search, and then the police would find me, again, NOT legally permitted to live here, as this IS an abandoned house with no owner. I don't care whether it's fair or not, But I have to stick with you two, like it or not, it's my best chance to get out of this without detection of my crime." He said, "Now, who is this "Caen"? He is obviously a friend of yours, where can I find him?" He asked, crossing his arms at Shade, "And if Caen IS in trouble, you alone would pose no help at all, being in the state you are, if they are in combat." He said, logically. 

The ant realized something before glancing up at Shade, "By the way, what's your name, troublemaker?" He asked, one of his antennae out the window, listening for any signs of approaching police, while the other stayed in, listening for Shade's response.

Storm groaned and rubbed his temples as he temporarily walked away from the shining array of hybridized magic and technology. He topped off his coffee mug before pulling open his refrigerator and peeking inside at the meager leftovers he had from last night's run to the Chinese take-out restaurant. Behind him, the array of magic, guided by his smartwatch app, continued to locate and quantify the tiny cell-sized robots in his apartment. Through the dull, creeping pain of his headache, his weary eyes settled on the half-open box of chicken-fried rice, before he glimpsed lazily back at his hands. In the distance, the TV still narrated, announcing that while two of the suspects had gotten away, a third suspect seemed to be attempting to surrender. Storm sighed, slowly closing the fridge, and standing there in solemn reflection as he massaged the bridge of his nose.

"... My hands were covered in these little bastards when I ate lunch today. I probably swallowed a bunch of them."

Caen watched as the round Shrike used went straight through a riot shield. Caen stared at Shrike, before speaking in an agitated manner "Shrike, I said non-lethal force," he looked around, trying to formulate some sort of escape plan. He doubted he could use the same trick as earlier, no doubt they'd predict that would happen and shoot him the moment he was in the air. "it looks like our best chance is to just steamroll them, but the success depends on their physical strength. Any thoughts, Shrike?"

At this moment, Caen noticed someone running around behind the line of soldiers. It was that hedgehog from before! Caen saw her disappear inside of a coffee shop. 'Ha ha, I don't think anyone'll serve her in there. Pretty sure this place is deserted, now,' Caen thought to himself.

" Non lethal is not working!, some times to get your message across...some times that takes force.  We have a few choices, one we can blast our way through the rear unit, they don't see to be as strong...two we can take them on and hope to hell we can survive a boat load of gun shot bullets.....or we surrender...I don't want to surrender..spending my next few weeks on prison or worse death row is not up my alley."


-Shrike was not gonna back down, that much was certain, he had a considerable firepower advantage, his weapons were strong enough to breach their armor and shields, nor did he seem afraid to use such force to deal with the situation, but for the sake of others, he was willing to listen to other ideas before pulling the trigger on them.-

Shade just watched and listened as the ant and wolf spoke to each other and then to Shade, "touché," he snorted to the wolf with a slight glare before turning to the ant and remarked, "I can help, mister, so don't start talking," he spoke with a cheeky tone and was obviously not in the best mood. Eventually, Shade calmed down and sighed, "I'm sorry for my rudeness," he apologised to the other two before directing his, "thank you," to the ant, "sorry we have unintentionally made you need to leave."

Shade turned to the wolf and began to walk over to him, ready to leave, "I have suffered worse injuries so it's not too bad," he said before mumbling, "I've also been shot in worse areas." Shade turned back towards the ant when he questioned Shade about his name; to which Shade answered with, "the name's Shade, Shade the hedgehog. What's yours?"

The officers drew back a bit further from Caen and Shrike, keeping them boxed in, but making that box bigger. Clearly they didn't want to be too close to them anymore. For the moment, things seemed to be at an impasse. The officers didn't want to press on with their numbers advantage as they appeared to be severely outmatched individually and losses were likely.


The wolf makes his way to the back window and pauses there. By this time two soldiers had swept around the back of the house and approached the open window. The wolf sees this displayed on his helmet's visor. Without waiting for Shade or the metal ant to realize what was going on, the wolf quick draws his pistols, leans out the window and fires off a shot in either direction, hitting the soldiers and shocking them into unconsciousness. He moves back from the window and looks towards his two acquaintances.

"I'm not sure if either of you realize what a chase entails, but you don't stand around chatting when you are involved in one." he says.

Without a further word, he climbs through the window, weapons at the ready in case any more opposition arrives.

Flame hadn't made it to any coffee shop, actually, no. She continued to stand out on the street where she had stopped before. She had yet to see any shop directly in view yet and, having only run to get back to the opposite end of the alleyway, she was well out of sight of the hedgehog and his armored companion, as previously mentioned. ( Sorry, just keeping to what I wrote before. :P )

In no particular hurry now, in fact, the hedgehog reached around to her back pocket, withdrawing a cell phone from her jeans. She began to stroll down the sidewalk, continuing to head away from where the officers were attempting to apprehend their suspected criminals. With a simple tapping of the screen a couple of times with her thumb, several options were pointed out to her in red. Flame mused out a small, "Hm..." as she looked to see what would likely be farther away from this mess and thus unaffected by it.

She paused at a street corner, looking up at the name of the street she was on, then back to her map. She was too fast to use any GPS and instead would just have to try and memorize the route...

Ah, there we go. A place closer to the edge of downtown and off towards the residential areas. No doubt they wouldn't have shut down for the day being so far from the troublemaking going on downtown. It should only be a couple of minutes of running for her. Phone in paw, she began to jog at a fairly average pace down the street, taking note of where to turn to reach her goal. Once it was set in her mind, she darted off into a blur, finally leaving behind the pair she'd been observing all this time.

"Oh, me? My name is Andrew, the Fire Ant, now then, I do believe we should get going, can either of you fly?" Andrew asked, grabbing metal plates that resembled leaves, equipping them to his arms, and then grabbing two fuel tanks, placing them into a jet pack, fastening it in place on his back. He grabbed two laser charges, placing them into the top two arms, his lower pair grabbing enhanced batteries and slipping them into his underarms. "I am quite familiar with the term "Chase", should we start running now, or should we wait for more policemen?" He asked, testing the mechanism on both of his arms, allowing a rotary cannon to sprout from each upper arm, satisfied, the guns retracted.

"Didn't you say something about helping some friends of yours? Perhaps we can pick them up?" He offered, stepping over to the door, grabbing it and ramming it into the ground, rooting the door firmly in place. The suited insect walked towards the luggage bag, hefting it over his back as his jet-pack opened and the bag slipped inside. "I will go the the adjacent building, once you meet with me there, you can lead us to your friend, does that sound reasonable?" He asked, stepping onto the windowsill, firing twin grappling hooks towards the building, after ensuring they were firmly attached, he leaped from the windowsill, activating his thrusters, he flew up to the rooftop. After landing, he turned back towards the window he flew from, signalling that it was clear to the other two.

The fox sat back down on the floor, glowing holograms projecting the latest diagnostics as they sought out the microscopic intruders. Ugh. This was going to take forever and who knew if it would actually pay off. He was on his own in trying to figure out the mystery of these nanomachines, no plucky lab assistant to give him a hand. As he began shuffling the diagnostic windows to check all the readouts, his mind drifted. As his eyes glimpsed over an exploded display of the individual components of one particular intact nanomachine, he remembered a time when there were more resources, more connections. Back then, this little mess he'd gotten himself into would be resolved in an afternoon. Now? He was going to be here for the next couple weeks trying to collect the millions of-- Wait...

He swiped another one of the holographic displays over.

SCAN COMPLETE. 3,329 OBJECTS FOUND. WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE?

That couldn't be right. The scan was over too soon. Was the software out of date? Was this particular strain of nanomachines more difficult to detect?  Why were there so few of them? Storm pulled another one of the displays over to himself and expanded it. The hologram expanded to encompass the the entire room in a glowing blue holographic display. Each nanomachine electrical return had been catalogued and highlighted with a faint magenta glow. So... Huh. The good news was that there weren't many of the nanomachines that came home the fox. But that was also the bad news. His fancy little trick of collecting them through electrical attraction was risky and tedious. But now, there were even less chances for him to get it wrong. Great.

The line of people that Caen was facing seemed to be moving backwards. Caen raised his eyebrow "they're moving away? They have the upper hand, why would they do that?" He asked himself, looking around. He called out to them "look guys, I'm wasting your time, you're wasting mine, why not just stop this crap? Trust me, you'll have my eternal gratitude."
He stood there, waiting for an answer, although, he didn't expect one.

" Time to roll the dice..Caen..we busting through the rear rank..it has less of them..I'm done trying to play nice, time to do things my way."

-Shrike turned back to face the rear guards, he charges as full speed, using his shoulder to smash his way through the rear ranks, combined with the suits own strength it was like being hit by a small truck at high speed.-

" Caen, time to move, kick it into high gear you have your ass kicked, leave her, I don't think she is gonna cause to much of a problem, plus we got bigger issues right now....I am improvising, words are not going to stop these guys." 

"Seriously? Fly? Were you not watching the news? I outflew a helicopter," Shade felt almost insulted that Andrew either hadn't seen the news or at least couldn't figure out that is was Shade who flew around the city. However, Shade sucked it up and looked at the wolf, "age before beauty?" He shrugged before telekinetically propelling himself onto the same building Andrew was on, "hello," he said to Andrew before looking back down at the wolf.

"Want any help?" Shade asked him in case he couldn't fly, "just asking," before turning back to Andrew, "so Andrew, what's the plan? Stick together? Separate? Fight? Run? What do we do? We obviously don't have a lot of time," Shade pondered the possibilities as he walked around in circles. To no avail however could Shade think of anything so he turned back to the wolf, "hey, you got any ideas what to do?"

The officers surrounding Caen and Shrike have no time to consider and reply to Caen's words as Shrike turns and barrels towards one of the groups. He appears the effortlessly smash through them, hurling many of them aside to crash against walls, dumpsters and the ground. Many of them are visibly injured and are left groaning in pain or unconscious. None of them are able to rise to their feet.

One officer from another team there radios in for medical support. Another reports Shrike's actions and asks for instructions. The ones still with their wits about them, level their weapons at Caen as he's still lagging behind Shrike.


The wolf glances back as Andrew and Shade take to the air to land on the roof of an adjacent building, coming into full view of the nearby helicopter. The crew notes their presence and reports it in as another team pulls into the area. The wolf shakes his head slightly and heads over the back fence of Andrew's property, not taking the time to respond to Shade's question and avoiding drawing anyone's attention towards him as he'd have to shout back at Shade to be heard.

Flame slowed down occasionally on her run to change directions. She felt a little more at ease as the sounds of destruction faded into the distance behind her. She was finally getting far enough away that she certainly wouldn't be able to see the red hedgehog attempt a passive route, while his partner decided to just brute force through the situation. Flame would've laughed if she'd seen it, though.

Instead, she was starting to see just a little more civilians again as the chaos hadn't quite spread this far. The crowds had certainly thinned from the helicopter chases and word spreading, but she wasn't necessarily the only person just going about doing their own thing anymore. Some people noticed the blur go by, but in a world full of super-powered people, it honestly wasn't so unusual a sight anymore and so no one seemed to pay her too much attention for now.

A couple of minutes passed with the navy blue hedgehog navigating her way away from downtown and towards her target coffee shop. Sweet, sweet coffee was so close now. The familiar signage came into view up ahead before too much longer.
Flame figured she could walk it from here since it was just another block away and so she slowed on down to a walk. She clicked a button on her phone, dimming the screen back to black, then slipped the device back into her pocket. Her arms raised up over her head as she let out a yawn.

'It's been a weird day,' she thought, 'I think I deserve extra whipped cream on this one.'

Andrew nodded his head at Shade's abilities, "I see. Impressive, I realize know how you can fight even in you current condition." He remarked, as his lower arms yanking the grappling hooks from the building walls as they whizzed as they retracted back into his arms. He listened to Shade's question, "First of all, I could barely scavenge enough power to make my machine's work, and as for the plan, I believe we should prioritize these friends of yours, if we can link up with them, our numbers will increase, and, if they work with you, it will increase our chances of escape, at least, I think so." He said, shrugging as he stared at the sky, watching for opponents.

"Careful.... caaaarefuuul." Storm muttered to himself as he magic'd a rather sizable cluster of the nanomachines towards the collective suspended between the two crystals. A little electrical arcing had damaged a bit of the cluster, but all in all, this brought the nanomachines that he had managed co collect up to about...

"Four hundred fifty-seven!" At this rate, the fox might be able to fill an eyedropper full of the tiny machines in a sterile, saline-based suspension fluid! Only about 2000 intact and functional of the little buggers left spread around his apartment.

[Weary groan...]

Caen watched as Shrike took off with impressive speed, smashing his way through the line of troopers, before they could even consider Caen's proposal "really, Shrike?" Caen said, when he finally had time to react. He ran towards them, hoping he could get past them before they realise what had happened. He sighed when they began to train their weapons on him. He unsheathed one blade, swinging it upwards when he reached the line of soldiers, knocking one of their weapons out of their hands, as a satisfying clanking noise rung through the alleyway "sorry about the injured guys, we're kinda in a hurry!" He shouted back as he sped off through the street, trying to catch up with Shrike.

-Shrike kept moving and didn't stop one he busted through the lines, clearing the way fro Caen, he had no time to settle little issues with them, he was acting and thinking of what to come instead of what was going on, he kept with in range so Caen could atleast see where he was going, he took refused in the darkest alley way he could find, as soon as Caen would go by Shrike grabbed him pulling him into the darkness.

hopefully this would hide them from the search teams, buying what ever little time he could they needed to find their target and fast.-

"Caen keep your voice down, alright listen...do you know where that wolf is ?...we need to find him...other wise we are out of options..we got nothing to go on with and still not indication of why he exactly is here, unless this is all a distraction for what is really going on."

-Shrike leaned his head out taking a peek before moving back into the darkness.- 

" They still got a chopper in the skies, but sooner or later its gonna have to refuel, Any ideas ? I suggest we use the time I bought us to relocate our so called " friend" 

Shade saw the wolf answer his question with a nod before moving away. Shade turned to Andrew, "okay Andrew, I think we're gonna need to travel by rooftops," he looked over the edge of the building. He shook his head before looking back at Andrew, "do you agree? Cause I got no other ideas anymore," he looked around before breathing in slowly and running to the other side of the building.