Mister Rodovic.

Sergei rolled out from beneath the Sweet Maria and the bundled wiring hanging out of her levitation drive: somehow Diana's voice came through loud and clear, even over the roar of the crowd and a dozen other 'levcraft' racing around the bend. He took a quick look around the hangar but it wasn't necessary. The AI had already made sure there were no unwanted guests. "A pit stop's a bad time to ask for sunscreen, Diana," the young pilot replied, quickly returning his attention to the drive. If he didn't get this sorted soon it would short out for sure...

Most amusing, Mr. Rodovic. There has been an emergency.

That caught his attention in a hurry. He listened to the full report until it ended abruptly when his mechanic Xander appeared in the hangar, Diana vanishing in a flash only a moment before. His mechanics knew the kid was none other than the Rocketeer, but they didn't - couldn't - know about the Avengers. "Tick-tock, Serg."

"Xander..." He frowned. "I gotta leave. Tell Phelia to get the rocket engine ready."

"Leave - what?! No! Hey Phel, get in here - kid says he needs you-know-what!" Even as he called Phelia, the mechanic still waved his arms in protest. "Listen, I'm sure the cops, or whatever, will handle whatever it is!"

"Not this time," Sergei muttered, already beginning to suit up, taking the helmet from Phelia's outstretched hands as she approached.

"But you're so damned close... augh! And what're we supposed to tell 'em?"

Sergei paused by his plane to consider it... tugged a glove on, grabbed a hold of the bundled wiring from the levitation drive and yanked it loose. The drive's steady hum suddenly changed into a high-pitched whine and died in a shower of sparks.

"I guess I overheated my levitation drive."

* * *

Sergei stood at the edge of the aerial loading dock at the back of the abandoned cargo tower, where he could still hear the roar of the race just on the other side of the building. His crew didn't like it, but it didn't matter: the Rocketeer was needed. He listened to air traffic control on the radio in his helmet as he got his bearings, checking the compass strapped to his wrist. Another report came through on his 'Avengers' frequency, and he grimaced.

Sounds like the party's already started. We'll come in low and fast.

One foot tipped over the edge of the loading dock, dipping a toe into a roughly half-mile drop, and let gravity and the wind at his back do the rest. One de Seversky, two de Seversky, he mouthed as the wind buffeted the human bullet his body attempted to create. Three -

He angled the resonance plates in his jetpack with a twitch of his thumb and twisted in the air, struggling for a few moments before leveling off just several hundred feet over the Star's End Harbor. It was an exhilarating feeling, the features flashing by and the racing wind separated from his body only by his suit, dangerously easy to get lost in... but he was well-practiced and kept it firmly out of mind and stayed focused. From the radio chatter he'd been sighted by a couple pilots, but no one too close, and so far there would be no one in his flight path to WestEnd either.

Saves me the trouble of dancing my way around the city.

He was there in what felt like moments, and in fact hadn't been much longer than that. The transition into WestEnd was abrupt, the thrust on his jetpack suddenly fluctuating until he stabilized it with a fresh injection of coolant. There's the warehouse, and... huh, looks like someone made themselves a new door...

Whoever was in there certainly heard his engine approaching as he landed outside, and two men raced toward the hole in the wall created by their fallen comrade to investigate it. The first man had only a moment to react to the bizarre sight of the Rocketeer around the corner and the hiss of steam in his gloves until the first blow struck, a literal knockout punch.

The second man didn't fare much better, stumbling his way back into the warehouse, bringing his sword into an overhand swing when the Rocketeer hit him in the jaw with his other fist, expending the current reserve of steam 'assisting' his fists while the mechanism along his arms drew a fresh supply from his jetpack.

The man crumpled almost immediately, and the Rocketeer stepped over him and up onto a stack of crates to have a look around the warehouse. He wouldn't have long to look, another one of the attackers breaking away from Finn to give chase. Where the hell is that bomb?!

Back in the warehouse in WestEnd...

Just as he expected, they kept right on coming. Of course, they hadn't seen him snap one of those swords as though it were made of balsa rather than metal, though they had to see the rather large hole in the warehouse wall. Perhaps they were hoping to overwhelm him by sheer numbers.

Fools.

Of course they were. They had no clue of what he was.

The short, shabby-looking man in front of the oncoming adversaries held many lifetimes worth of memories, and among the favorites was of a man of much greater stature than the one which stood there now. That was among his favorite of lives, despite the tragedy woven into it - that man had been at his best in the midst of battle.

This one was no different, as fond of the feud as that one had been. And already the lust, the frenzy of memory from a life so long in the past, was taking hold.

He was distracted for only a moment by the sound of something approaching outside, drawing the attention of two of those approaching from behind, who turned to see who - or what - was coming, heading for the hole he'd made using their compatriot. The others kept right on coming.

The grin spread wider, an odd light dancing in his eyes as he looked around at those surrounding him. "Are ye fellas sure ye're wan'in' tae be ridin' this train?"

Their answer was an outcry as five of them charged. Dimly, somewhere behind him, he heard a hiss and the sounds of men being beaten on before he ducked under the slashing blade of one and threw a punch into another's chest to send him soaring as though he had been hit with a wrecking ball to collide with a large stack of boxes. The imprint of his fist could be seen in the middle of his chestplate before the stack buried him.

Another came in with a large battle axe in hand, trying to cleave Finn's head in two. Rather than moving away, he stepped into the blow, letting the haft of the weapon come down on his shoulder to snap like a twig before he grabbed the man's arms and turned, swinging him bodily around before letting go of him to fly a short distance, right onto the pointing blade of another rushing to impale the Irishman. The force was sufficient to stab right through his armor as though it were soft cheese and send both of them sliding across the floor to crash into a stack of pallets.

It came to him so easily, that rush of battle, the way things seemed to slow down as his senses sharpened. In a single moment, he saw one of the group surrounding him break away to give chase to a man who appeared to be wearing some sort of metal backpack and a helmet, some sort of strange getup, and he also sensed another coming in behind him with sword raised to try slicing him open, the same that had tried to take his head moments before.

He turned and leapt straight upwards as the one coming from behind closed on him, kicking out with both feet to catch the attacker in the chest. He used that one to push off of in a mighty leap, soaring over the heads of the few remaining around him. With a quick flip he turned to come down on his feet right in front of the one chasing the newcomer in the odd getup.

The Irishman hadn't been told about backup, but then, he hadn't really stuck around long enough to get the message from the glowing image of a girl, either. Still, he could work with that easily enough.

The helmeted one's pursuer didn't even have time to register the fact of this bizarre little man landing in front of him before he was seized by the front of his breastplate and thrown in the other's direction in a perfect soaring arc. "Oi, kid! Alley-oop!"

He didn't even look in that direction - he was sure the kid would get it, and in any case, he had something else to occupy his attention - a woman all in black, stepping in to join the fray.

Well, all right, that wasn't all. Just as she was stepping in, and he heard/felt/saw/sensed the other guards coming after him, he felt something else, as well.

Power. Dark, ugly, deathly power.

And with it, an oily voice that simply seemed to ooze a dark sort of gleefully mad pleasure.

"So...the heroes have found us out! Well, good...I was getting bored just sitting around in the basement with that damned pile of explosives. Now it looks like I can put all those rotting corpses down there with them to good use!"

He had just enough time to look in the direction of that voice and see a tall, gangling guy in darkly gleaming armor with wizened, maddened features chanting something in a tongue that sounded somewhat like Latin, but with something dark and guttural in it.

He knew there was some kind of magic at work here, and thought it would be some kind of direct assault.

Until he heard the groaning under his feet, followed shortly by the cracking and splintering sounds of wood giving way as the floor beneath his feet was suddenly being punched and clawed through by dozens of skeletal, stinking arms.

Aw, bleedin 'ell...

The thought crossed his mind as right between his legs another of those rotten limbs punched through and grabbed him by a foot. Reaching down, he grabbed that arm by the wrist and pulled the undead body right up through the floor as easy as you please and tossed it up in the air, then leaped right up after it to throw it a punch that sent it right back down through the floor and into the basement below with a crash, opening up a large hole in the boards. As he landed on his feet, he looked around to the newly-arrived woman. He could feel, even from this distance, that she had power of her own.

"Oi, lass!" He gestured between himself and the kid in his odd getup before he reached down and ripped up a long portion of a floorboard, six feet in length and several nails still clinging to it. "We'll deal wi' this lot...you take care o' tha' bas'ard!"

Four more of the zombified bodies came running at him, and he turned and swung the long section of 2x4 around to smash through all of their skulls at once in a row, sending rotting pieces of their heads flying everywhere.

"Alley-who?!" Sergei hollered back, and then there was a body flung his way. Now he'd been making regular use of a punching bag since the fall and even taken lessons from a boxing coach, but physical combat beyond that was pretty fuzzy. Hell, even the basic judo Katt had taught him only really worked when all parties had their feet on the ground. Or at least close to the ground.

Still the pilot tried his best, winding up a punch and striking the man in the ribs as he went sailing past. It didn't seem to change the trajectory much, sending the man tumbling down the other side of the crates and unsettling the whole pile. Sergei narrowly scrambled off of the lot as it collapsed, and then --

"Augh." He could smell them, even through his helmet. Zombies. Under other circumstances Sergei might've been thinking pretty hard about who they were before they fell victim to this necromancer, but not when the victims in question were shambling forward, intent on a meal of rookie pilot. He snatched up a busted board from the newly formed hole in the floor, taking his cue from Finn, and was in the process of fending off three zombies with it when someone grabbed him from behind.

He felt a moment of relief that they weren't dead hands clutching at him, but only a moment. "Time to die, short-stack!" the man growled.

"Short-stack?!" Now both their feet were planted on the ground, and Sergei had no problem shifting his weight, sending the man tumbling over his shoulder and into the advancing zombies, all four of them slipping into the hole in the floor.

It didn't take long for those zombies and the others downstairs to converge on him, and Sergei winced at the sound of flesh being pulled and torn apart... But it afforded him an opportunity, too. With the zombies distracted, he could check the basement for the explosive device, which to the best of his knowledge was nowhere to be found on the main floor.

The Rocketeer looked left and right, checked the pressure gauge on his arm, then dropped down into the basement, rolling past the grisly scene into the darkness. Switching on his flashlight revealed another advancing zombie, but it only gurgled a warning as it went by, favoring the fresh meat of their recent kill over the prospect of fighting the Rocketeer... for now, at least. The pilot edged carefully away from them, searching the corners for any sign of an unusual device...

The black leather-clad scarred woman's focus remained on drawing the Air away from the dark sorcerer. Unaware of any activity around her....

Until a body suddenly interposed itself between the Enforcer and the enemy. A fierce oath in French passed between her gritted teeth. She almost turned the reverse tornado effect upon the man also, but the flash of eldritch energy that he intercepted from the dark sorcerer with his body stopped her in time.

The abrupt halt to the Avenger's efforts at harnessing her brand of sorcellerie in the WestEnd brought on a literally blinding for a moment migraine and dropped her to her black leather clad knees. With difficulty, she forced her dark lens shielded sapphire eyes open to focus on both the man who saved her life and the sorcerer in the dark armor.

It was not the words that the bastard sorcerer spoke which chilled Rachael to the proverbial bone, for she had heard variations of that speech over the years that she had spent with the Watch, but the raw power that he exuded. Her scarred features hardened into an impassive mask.

"Non, fou cochon, you will not take this city. You will not take this world." She regained her stance with grim determination amidst the grisly remains. More words left her lips in that dark language, "The ones who will die will be you and the abominations like you."

Her shielded gaze flicked briefly to the gore-covered man by her while she withdrew a pair of disks, one silver, one black, from an inside pocket of her remains spattered black leather trenchcoat. "You may wish to move, Monsieur." By the time that the softly spoken words left her lips, those discs were tossed with blurred speed toward the dark armored enemy. Upon contact, they emitted in tandem a localized tazer field and a cloud of liquid nitrogen.

Under the cover of that attack, the Enforcer resumed her Elemental strike to deprive the bastard sorcerer of Air.

He didn't move, he flattened himself to the floor while the woman did...whatever it was she did, throwing her discs at the sorcerer. He didn't have much use for such weapons himself - he was more for simple, brute force and using whatever he could get his hands on, when necessary - but he was still curious enough to look.

The gangly man was good enough to use his skills to deflect them away from himself, and as Finn watched from the floor they flew off to either side of him and exploded - one into a ball of what looked like low-grade lightning, the other into a cloud of mist that looked to be very cold, if the smell and the frosting effect on the wood were any indication.

He looked around the cavernous room they were in as he worked to get back to his feet. Electricity wasn't truly harmful to him - not much was - but that didn't mean it didn't hurt. Still, he could see that the corpses were closing on them, even as the woman started that tornado effect on the necromancer, sucking his air away. The woman had that trick down pretty well.

Getting up to his feet again, the Irishman raised his fists above his head as though he were stretching, and with a loud cry brought them crashing down into the floor as he faced the group of shambling corpses heading their way.

The effect was impressive, to say the least - the wood under his fists shattered, sending a blast of thick splinters out at the closest ones and sending a rippling shockwave through the floor, knocking all of the zombified dead nearby down and tumbling several more off of their feet.

At the same time as he was assessing the damage he'd done he felt that damnable sorcerer gathering more power to himself just an instant before he unleashed some other spell. He looked just in time to be able to brace himself as with a sound like a scream a thunderous wave of pure kinetic energy rolled off of the necromancer, radiating out from him in all directions.

Whatever he did must've disrupted the woman's efforts, because the man started laughing, though perhaps a bit breathlessly. "You puny weakling! Do you really think that your simple little tricks can defeat me? I am an Ebon Knight, one of Raven's chosen! I am more powerful than you, more than all of you - a veritable god among insects! You will all be my slaves!"

All righ', tha' does et, Finn thought. He'd had enough of this bastard's rhetoric, and he was starting to get more than a little pissed.

"...and you, you skinny scarfaced b*tch, I will make you int my personal chattel, breaking you until you are nothing more than a whimpering, sniveling piece of flesh to be used for my own pleas-!"

That was as far as the bastard got. Finn pushed off the floor, flying over and grabbing the gangly prick by a leg as he landed on his feet. With a swing of his arm he picked the necromancer up, swung him up over his head by the leg and brought him down with a crash to the floor as easily as though he were swinging a pillow.

He wasn't done yet. He didn't even give the sorcerer a chance to realize what had happened, just swung him up and down into the floor again, and again, and again, back and forth an easy seven times. Each crash into the floor splintered wood and bone and pulverized the blackened armor the man was wearing until he was as limp as a ragdoll.

With one final swing he smashed the man so he was pushed into the floor and left there, partly buried and pierced in places by the splintered floorboards.

Finn stood over him, looking down at what was left of the braggart with a triumphant look as he spoke to the unheeding form.

"Oi, who'd be th' puny un now, ye bas'ard? If any o' us is gon' tae be th' b*tch 'ere, i's gon' be you."

He turned to look at the woman, dusting off his hands with a smirk as he snorted. "A god 'mong insects, my arse."

Thud. Thud. Thud! Thud! THUD! The Rocketeer winced at the necromancer's final impact with the floor - he caught a glimpse of one of the man's sleeved arms dangling through a splintered hole, squinting at it through a steady shower of dust scattered by Finn's powerful attack, before the Enforcer pulled it back through the ground floor to cuff the man. He heard her descending the steps, but as soon as she came into sight someone was contacting him through the Avengers' frequency.

He gave her an apologetic grimace and put up a hand for her to wait while he listened: ...go outside, look on the roof for anything that looks like a transmitter device - a black box, something with an antenna on top of it. There'll be three of them up there. When you find them, you're going to have to destroy all three at the same time. Make sure they're all done at once, because if there's so much as a second's delay, it'll set all the bombs off at once. Do not remove the batteries until the transceivers are dead.

"Affirmative," he replied to Diana. "Make sure to notify the others to only disable the antenna on each device to be safe. Don't want to interrupt the power supply before those batteries are out."

"Diana," Sergei explained to the Enforcer, wiping dust from around his eyes with a handkerchief in one of his flight-suit pockets. "They've found at least one similar device in another location. Look, ah... these plastics? Meant to level an entire city block. Apparently these wires," he gestured to the three wires he'd found, "lead to transceivers somewhere outside the building. Before I can do anything else, they need to be disabled at the same time. Only -- "

He winced again when another of the runic 'digits' disappeared from the display. "...Only disable the antenna. Last thing we want to do is interrupt the power supply and activate these batteries. They need to do this at the exact same time. I can do these batteries myself maybe," he grimaced again, this time over his shoulder at the device, "but if you've got any Watch colleagues in bomb squads, or if you've got any training with this stuff, might be better left to you guys. If yeah, then great, we can leave this to the Watch... if not, we still need their help locating those transceivers and having enough hands to knock out the antennas at the same time."

He took a moment to mop at his face again, wiping away the sweat accumulating at his brow and along his jaw, and looked up at her. "Can we do that?"

Her tone did exactly that - in spite of the situation, she seemed calm and professional, and it cooled the young pilot's nerves. "...Okay. Alright." He looked between her and the device again, the wires, the batteries, considered the amount of seaforium there, mouthed over some numbers... considered the runic display for another moment, finally deriving their association with one another...

"We have thirty-eight minutes and forty seconds," he announced, setting a stopwatch accordingly. "You're right... Our first priority needs to be finding the three transceivers ourselves. They should be within two hundred meters of the device itself, but it's possible they'll be a whole hell of a lot closer. Wish we could just follow the wiring from here... but each disappears straight into the wall... which means we'll just have to find each transceiver by luck..."

There was a smirk. "Good news is, each one's got an antenna that probably looks a lot like this," gesturing to a multi-pronged metal extension at the top of the stack of the seaforium extending up into the rafters, just underneath the thin wooden floor, "which probably puts each of our transceivers above ground."

While he was talking, the Rocketeer had already suited back up with his gloves, mask and goggles. Now he pulled on his helmet, his next words coming through the speaker: "I'm gonna take to the air, see what I can see. You two patrol the area however you're able, all-right? We'll let each other know with a holler once we find something."

Within minutes the Rocketeer was airborne again, hovering fifty feet over the warehouse: for a change the Nexus seemed to be behaving, leaving his jetpack alone for the most part, but it didn't seem to make him find the transceivers any faster.

Between the earlier battle with the necromancer and his zombies, and his rocket leaving a trail of steam and making a decent amount of noise, a crowd of onlookers had stepped out into the nearby streets. Sergei gave them the occasional 'stand back!' or 'please clear the area!' through the speakers in his helmet, but only a few seemed to listen and actually disperse. He could only hope that the Watch would have better luck - and that they'd defuse the bomb in enough time anyway.

"Dammit," he hissed to himself at the last group of onlookers to stubbornly stay put. He twisted in the air and lowered his altitude to do a cloverleaf over the surrounding blocks, scanning the debris-strewn rooftops, crooked steeples and crumbling chimneys for any sign of the transceivers. So far all he'd found was a rusty old TV antenna.

"Enforcer," he transmitted over the Avengers' frequency, "any sign of them yet?"

The Enforcer nodded to the man-named-Finn after she stepped from the darkness of the warehouse. "Oui. Merci, Monsieur." Her dark lens shielded sapphire eyes briefly shuttered closed until her vision adjusted once again to the brightness outside.

The raven haired woman surrendered to her particular brand of sorcellerie to allow the Air to carry her aloft. Her enhanced vision swept over the buildings in the area while she hovered.

When something that matched the general description of the transmitters passed before her line of sight, she swooped down to check. Upon closer examination each time, it was revealed to be a cable box encrusted white with pigeon guano.

The scarred Avenger's curses in a multitude of languages were cut off in mid vocalization by the signal that came over her earpiece. "Non, I have not seen anything yet that resembles what we are looking for?."

Her words faded away at the sight of a group of pigeons which hovered around her.

Merde. Why did I not consider this source before?

"But perhaps there are other sources that have. I will report when I find something, Rocketeer. Hopefully it will be in time."

Avian creatures would not harm the Keeper of Air, according to the lore. Perhaps these same creatures would aid in the search at the Keeper's request. She sketched a crude design of the transmitter in the rooftop gravel with her leather gloved index finger. "Find this and report to me."

When the pigeons scattered to the four winds, a sigh left the Enforcer's stern lips. Bird brains. She joined them in the Air and continued the search.

On the ground, meanwhile, the bomb disposal squad and crowd control units from the Eleventh precinct were on their way to assist the trio of heroes in their endeavor.

Gloved fingers pressed against the earpiece as the next transmission from the Rocketeer came through. The Enforcer's dark lens shielded gaze swiveled to first focus on the young man in the distance before she pinpointed the possible locations of the devices according to his expressive gestures.

"Oui, I read you, loud and clear, Rocketeer. Fifty to one hundred meters, approximately one hundred and twenty degrees south of your position, if you are compass point zero and facing me."

Her usually stern lips twitched in restrained amusement at the sight of the pigeons hovering around the Rocketeer.

Mon dieu, the bird brains came through, after all.

The Avenger renewed her aerial search in the indicated directions. A pigeon perched atop the second transmitter device as she landed lightly on the rooftop gravel nearby.

Merci, pigeon. I shall not indulge in quail ever again.

"Rocketeer, this is the Enforcer. Second device has been located sixty five meters southeast of your position, again if you are compass point zero facing me. Triangulation as well as device transmission effectiveness would place the third device approximately sixty five meters southwest of your position. Do you copy?"

Merde. This will be a most delicate operation, as they say. If the devices are not deactivated at exactly the same moment?.

The Enforcer stubbornly pushed any thoughts of possible failure to the back of her mind. They would succeed in this mission. They had to, for the sake of the innocents in the streets below.

Can I take out all of the devices out from here?

As much as she desperately wanted to scream No! I am only human! in fifteen different languages, the Enforcer firmly restrained that impulse. She was an Avenger, damnit. Protector of the innocent. And those innocents in the streets below depended upon her now to succeed. So did both her teammate and the man-named-Finn.

Therefore, she had to succeed.

The Enforcer's dark lens shielded sapphire eyes sharply narrowed their focus to spot the transmitters in turn, and committed their location to her eidetic memory. Summoning up all of her concentration and willpower to tightly control the Element tied to her Key, three blades of highly compressed Air shot forth from the talisman, aimed precisely at each of the transmitters' antennae.

Ping!--Ping!--Ping!

After the antennae were bisected simultaneously, the Avenger's held breath left her in a soft rush, and she dropped on her black leather covered knees to the gravel studded rooftop.

"M?re de Dieu, il a travaill?. Merci, que Dieu." Rachael's whisper to the wind trembled like her right black leather gloved hand did when she crossed herself.

"Mission accomplished on this end, Rocketeer." Her voice over the transmitter to her teammate however was steady, cool and professional. "Shall I meet you at your location or do we reconvene back at the warehouse for clean-up?"

Gravel crunched under her booted feet as the Enforcer slowly regained her stance upon it.

Once this is over, I am treating myself to a dozen cinnamon rolls.... and I have earned each and every last one of them!

The Enforcer's lips twitched in a gesture of restrained amusement at the Rocketeer's vocal and physical expressions of enthusiasm for the success of her part of the mission. "Oui, I will do so, mon ami. See you on the ground, soon, Rocketeer. Enforcer out."

Once she switched the earpiece slash transmitter off, she removed her cell from its resting place inside her black leather trenchcoat and punched in the code to contact her coworkers in the bomb disposal units. "Baer. Wynter. Proceed with the disposal of the explosives. The transmitters have been neutralized. Ten eighteen. Oui. Ten thirty nine. Merci."

Once the call was disconnected, the Avenger slipped the cell back into that inside pocket. Her gloved fingers shook slightly as they brushed the talisman made of diamond and turquoise, and she rose into the Air.

Her landing on the street below was a bit less graceful than her ascent, but nonetheless she regained her stance with relative ease. A bottle of water was gratefully taken from one of the rescue workers. "Merci."

In search of something to eat to replenish her depleted stores of energy while she drank the water slowly so as not to regurgitate it, the Enforcer's dark lens shielded sapphire gaze fell upon the boxes from a local bakery set aside for those involved in the disposal and evacuation operations. Her lips flatlined briefly at their contents.

"Donuts," she stated in a tone of voice strongly reminiscent of a certain fedora wearing adventurer. "Why did it have to be donuts?"

Sergei was just around the corner, leaning on the door of an old Jeep CJ when the Black Knight landed. He lowered his canteen for a better look, and two similarly dressed figures turned their heads at the same time - a man and a woman in khaki-colored flightsuits, black masks and goggles. The man was in the middle of refueling his jetpack while the woman checked the Rocketeer's helmet and gauges.

"You heard the man. Suit me up."

"You're overheated - "

"C'mon, take five, please - "

But Sergei shook his head, and as one the pair of them seemed to relent. The man strapped his jetpack back on, while the woman jammed his helmet back on. She gave it a few rough slaps to check that it was secure, and as a warning - she shook her finger at him and said, "We can't help you if you pass out up there. We'll follow as close as we can."

"Not too close," the Rocketeer hollered over his shoulder as they started the old CJ's engine. He jogged over to the Black Knight and the Enforcer, still doing a final check of his gauges. "Temple's closer, but this rocket makes an awful lotta noise. If Buram's people need the element of surprise, there's almost no doubt I'd take that away from them. Think I should take Market instead?" He looked between the two of them.

The Enforcer paused in her reach for a cake donut that she could possibly pretend was a round muffin long enough to fool her stomach and regarded her teammate. "I endure them daily, mon ami." The item was removed from the box. "Oui, we were most fortunate that the devices proved easy to disable." The ersatz muffin was speedily and neatly devoured. Leftover crumbs were brushed off from her person with her black leather gloved hand to the ground under her black leather booted feet. A seemingly stray pigeon swooped down to peck at the leavings.

The Avenger's dark lens shielded sapphire gaze flicked from the Black Knight to the Rocketeer as the latter approached the pair. "There is a saying that to speak the name of the devil is to summon him, non?" Her lips briefly twitched with repressed amusement.

Her scarred features soon hardened into an impassive mask while she listened to the briefing and change of orders from the Knight. "Oui, the Ranger is correct, and we should assist at the Temple first. As the Rocketeer pointed out, we can go elsewhere should things be, as they say, well in hand there."

The Enforcer's cell was removed from an inside pocket of her black leather trenchcoat. Gloved fingers blurred while they keyed up a map slash GPS application, and the information thus provided of the directions to her future destination was committed to her memory. "If you can get our teammate there silently, Black Knight, we should have the element of surprise, non?" she commented and slipped the device back into that inside pocket.

She allowed the Air to let her rise a bit from the ground. "Perhaps I can also call on more assistance in reconnaissance from those who aided us in finding the devices, mon amis." Her dark lens shielded gaze flicked from the "stray" pigeon that remained where she formerly stood to the Rocketeer, and one eye quickly closed in a wink.

If those bird brains do the job again, I will bring the ones in the park by the precinct a large bag of popcorn every day from now on.

The Keeper of Air hovered above the pair somewhat easily, due to the combination of the odd wind currents and the fluctuating sorcellerie that made her manipulation of such difficult at best. "Time to enjoy more of the ride that our E-Ticket has bought us, non?"