Exigency: The Old Guard

Darghibous notes that the fire escapes are retracted. Seems like a terrific oversight: what if the facility's computer system broke down during a crisis and trapped the occupants? A deathtrap in the making. And it also makes his job a lot harder. There is, at least, an emergency access ladder that's already deployed, although climbing it all the way to the roof might prove tiring.

At first glance it seems to be business as usual inside the building. Checking the main surveillance channels shows no sign of heightened security presence.

The story so far

The planet Valon is in chaos. Its phase beacon has been down for three days now, cutting the world off from the rest of Alpha Sector. The timing is suspicious: a Vault has been found during recent excavations in Valon city centre. A facility of indeterminate size but unimaginable value, assumed to be piled high with relics from before the Schism.

Chief Cáceres of the Valon PD calls the party in to grill them about their whereabouts and possible involvement in recent events, but in truth he has reason to believe they're the only people he can trust right now. His police force is caught in the crossfire in a civil war between loyalists of the Mercenary League, and renegades who believe the current situation calls for them to seize control of the entire planet. The party, too, are soon caught up in the fighting.

During their investigations at a club whose upper levels have been converted into a loyalist HQ, the party discovers a major architect of the civil war: Lord Councillor Graves-Burton, henceforth abbreviated to LCGB because damn is that a mouthful. After Pudge's attempt to hack the Merc network is discovered, the party are almost taken out by a very powerful psion in LCGB's employ. They're able to get away when Pudge hotwires a car... only to find themselves attacked by renegades. After a predictably one-sided fight an interrogation reveals that LCGB has been playing both sides against each other and swearing to share whatever is inside the Vault. Pudge scans data gained back at the HQ and confirms it: LCGB is a rotten bastard.

Wilhelm suggests forcing a showdown with LCGB and the party agrees that the current situation is untenable and that they want to take the fight to him. Haunted as he is by predictions of the future, Darghibous in particular knows that LCGB cannot be allowed to open the Vault.

He has arranged a meeting with the Lord Councillor, who believes that Darghibous has pertinent information about the Vault (and Darghibous truly does because he's spent so long doing his own research into it). The location presented was the High Council embassy, picked out in part due to Serana's familiarity with it but mostly because LCGB will feel safest there. LCGB himself claims that he'll be sitting on a park bench in the embassy's commercial centre awaiting Darghibous' arrival. Whether the party truly believes this is another thing...

Serana immediately went and picked a fight with an Arbiter she's got some history with. This finally drew LCGB's powerful psion out of the shadows: Reave, an Enforcer who is working with LCGB for some currently unknown reason.

Pudge has already tapped into the embassy's security system and as a result the party can hear Reave's vox chatter... With Reave on the verge of melting Serana's mind, Wilhelm makes his move. Neither has ever fought anyone quite like the other before.

Wilhelm strikes and Reave repeatedly sways and sidesteps, dance-like, lazily. Her hand is suddenly holding a harmonic blade: a sword-like cousin to Wilhelm's own vibro-scythe.

She allows herself a slight smile. "Come now. Did you honestly think I hadn't noticed you? I—"

Reave stops. A thin trickle of red leaks down her neck and on to her shoulder. She goggles at the cut as if she's never seen her own blood before. Cuts plural: Wilhelm's swipes nicked her repeatedly.

"Oh, you are good. Pity I have to kill you now."

She moves like a snake. It's all Wilhelm can do to dodge and parry the worst of it. And all the while, he can feel her psi clawing and biting at the back of his mind.

Nobody can tell because of his helmet, but Cafertol's jaw is hanging loose at the sight of the exchange of blows. On the comm channels, Pudge can make out various different Mercs swearing in disbelief.

Cafertol turns around and walks away. He's not moved by Serana's words but he feels as if the situation has escalated way beyond his abilities.

Reave is an impressive combatant with few peers. To spectators she appears to blur and flicker and at times vanish altogether, but Wilhelm has made a career out of fighting people like her. As much as she tries to mask her presence and censor her existence in Wilhelm's mind, she cannot edit out the movement of air, the rustle of leaves or the depressions her feet leave in the grass. Wilhelm keeps finding his mark, again and again, without pause and without offering an opening.

Reave is starting to look tired, but her mastery of her own body is such that any wounds she suffers quickly stop bleeding. She jumps back, raises her sword as if to strike with it... and then hits Wilhelm with her psi. His preparation allows him to maintain consciousness, but he's staggered all the same.

"I can keep doing that," Reave states. "And I can do it harder."

Yeah, sounds good. Or, you know, Pudge also has Psionic Disruption and Support as a resource. Flavor-wise, it comes back to his recent discovery of latent psi-abilities. He doesn't really know how to control it or use it in precise ways, but in a high-adrenaline situation where he just needs to "do something" he can boost an ally's psi or disrupt an enemy's.

Would the shield negate the final two hits?