[Maria goes off sneaking. Which way is she going at the T- intersection?] * Maria goes and throws her stealthsuit on and stuff her street clothes into her backpack. She then goes searching for Shig! And since she didn't take the downward branch of the t-intersection yet, she does that now. Sneakily. [Maria walks for a bit, then comes across several injured, unconscious, and/or dead guards. Looks like there was a fight here.] * Maria shrugs. She's looking for doors and guys with messy hair like Rei's, not dead guards. [Maria eventually gets to a branch to the left, and an elevator to the right. Coming out of the elevator is a squad of Interpol troops.] [Four in all.] * Maria tries to see if she can avoid being noticed by them, just for kicks. ( Gimme a stealth roll. ) [Maria succeeds; none of the guards notice her.] * Maria heads down away from the elevator, unless she spots other doors down that way. [Maria finds more dead-dying guards, and several rooms that have been opened; nothing overly special in them.] * Maria frowns. And that covers this whole level, right? ( There's the path left from the jail, and this hall continues on. ) ( I'm just saying it's not a door-less hallway :P ) ( You're passing plenty of unimportant rooms. ) * Maria continues on this hall. (I thought left from the jail was towards the hall I'm in now? ?_? ) ( No, that's the T intersection. ) ( You're going parallel to that hall. ) [Maria finds a door at the end of the hall, opened.] * Maria looks through. Any Reidads in here? [There's an elevator behind! Going down.] * Maria gets in the elevator and pushes the down button. She clings to the cieling and disables any cameras she notices. [There are cameras! Disabled!] ( Wait, you mean already disabled? ) ( Or that I disabled? ) ( Already disabled. ) * Maria dreads the thought of Francine having been down this way already, but pushes the down button anyway. [The door opens. Maria finds herself facing several guns. Luckily(?) they belong to Roy and Marco. Several more guards are here, dead or injured, and Francine is slumped against a wall clutching a bloody arm.] Don't point those at me. Have you seen any prisoners? Marco: "I saw the Great Escape once..." No, I mean here on this level in this building. Roy: "Prisoners? No... but milady is resting at the moment. She's been fighting hard." He gestures to the fallen enemies. "See?" "We haven't checked this floor yet. Don't know what's here." * Maria nods. "Actually, if you take her upstairs..." she directs them to the room Rei and the others are in, "Rei can heal her up, I think. She's got some sort of neato power for it." You guys can go ahead and do that while I do my skulking thing here, if it's alright with ya. Francine: "It's just... a scratch.... Be fine soon." * Maria shrugs. "If you way so, Fura, Fera, er... Miss." Stupid Western names. In that case, you three stay here and make sure there's a place for me to run back to in case things get hairy. Back inna bit. * Maria slips her hood on and heads off to the right. [Maria sees a large door, with some label written in Chinese.] * Maria hums. It looks important, right? [It sure does.] * Maria decides the keycard won't work if it didn't for the last one, and goes straight to her electronic lock knocker-outer thingie that I really need to make a name for. ( Electronics... Oh... straight roll ) * Maria inserts the guard's keycard to reset the lock. [The door opens, revealing a large, circular room! And in the room is Shig. Yay! Only.... His eyes are glowing a fierce purple, and he's got a katana in his right hand, and is staring down at Kaira, who's kneeling and clutching her arm, which is bleeding pretty fiercely.] (Ooooh, crap.) * Maria stares but doesn't make a peep at all. Instead, she sneaks around to the side, hoping to get a shot at Shig's sword arm. * Shigeru sideglances just slightly in Maria's direction, And suddenly she finds herself unable to move. * Maria is unable to move. This is bad. Badbadbad. ( Can she talk? ) ( Yeah. ) Uhm... hi, Mr. Ueda. Rei was worried about you? * Shigeru moves very slowly towards Kaira, one hand in his pocket, the other gripping the sword. "Well well... I imagine the others will be along shortly as well." Yeah. And then there's an off chance we might beat up your puppet and lock you away again. And you just can't have that, now can you? * Shigeru snickers. "You don't understand a thing. This is the host I've been waiting for. Puppet? No, we are as one." * Shigeru continues his slow walk. Sure you are. And you're just the best thing to happen to your puppet since ever, right? I mean, hey, he obviously gets the better deal here. So, how many of his friends and family you gonna kill? * Kaira tries to stand up, but falters and falls back on her hands and knees. She looks up at him and shouts, "Dammit Shig, open your eyes!" All of them. Figured. And he'll just love that, of course. Not that it matters, since he's a puppet and you could care less about what he cares about, right? * Shigeru glances at Maria. "Since I've met you, you've been nothing but annoying. Why don't you go act your age?" And just think, his wife and one of his sons wielded you in the past. I guess the whole 'live by the sword die by the sword' thing is true, huh? *I've* been annoying? This from a damn lump a tin that's been a pain in *everyone's* ass. [Maria suddenly feels like someone reached into her brain and scooped out all the gooey bits that let her think. And it hurts like hell.] * Maria screams! Normally she'd try not to but she's missing the gooey bits. There. That's a bit better. And just to make sure I'm up to prime... [Maria feels suddenly very tired, too. She doesn't need the thought- processes to notice that, either.] Uh... huh... p-punk assss b... * Shigeru steps up to Kaira and puts the tip of the blade at her throat. "And as for you... Well. I'm sure the world could do with one less vampire." w...wuss... * Kaira closes her eyes. "If there was ever a human I thought I could trust... It might have been you." * Shigeru smiles. "Guess you picked the wrong one."