World Tree MUSH

    The alarm went out shortly after it became known that Grayson Grau had overpowered his guard and escaped his cell. The Hermetics are fairly certain that Grau was still inside the facility, as the illusion mage certainly could not fight his way out, but would need time to devise a trick to escape into the offices and then the lobbies. There are certain items the rogue mage would need to escape besides. The shadow mage named Kira Nocturne and her apprentice Alan Van Allen are responsible for heading up the capture attempt. 
    "If Grau escapes the sanctum, there's no way we can reliable track him in the city." Kira explains as she leads the group to the heavy door that acts as the gateway to the pocket dimension prison. She opens the sooty iron door to allow entry. Beyond is a series of brightly lit concrete halls with sturdy cell doors. "Be careful, Grau can conjure illusions and split into two people."

"That's amusing. I can also split him into two people." Temulin answers Kira, the mercenary is clad in her usual armour; and that seems to be trying to pass for a joke. "So besides those things, what else should I know about the fellow?" She's got one sword on the hilt of the blade she wears on her back, head swiveling left and right, paying close attention to her surroundings.

Serrah looks like she doesn't particularly want to be here. She's dressed in her usual black T-shirt and plaid skort, with a sports bag of baseballs at her hip. "Yeah, uh ..." She shrugs, idly tossing a baseball up and down. "How easily can he be taken by surprise?" She glances around everyone else here, and seems satisfied that there aren't any vampires who might be on Vincent's side. "No reason, just curious," she adds sarcastically. "Not like a vampire's powers might be useful here or anything."

"It was a pain in the ass bringing them in the first time! Then again I can imagine it would be hard to keep someone who can create illusions imprisoned. Assuming they're smarter than Sybil that is." The al-mir'aj girl figured the Hermetics only dragged her into this mess because of her previous involvement. "Well,we would need to figure out who they're first, they could be anyone in here..." Benedicta looks a bit startled as she looks at the others.

    "Right," Dante says, following along with Ivory drawn. "Let's see if he can disappear bullets." He says with a cocky little grin. He's dealt with the odd sorcerer before, they're usually all style and little substance in the end, can't really stand up to much in a straight up fight, like Arkham.

    Kira pinches her nose as Serrah and Temulin appear to not be serious about the problem at hand. "If anyone is not serious about this, leave. Because for all we know, Grau is opening the cells of other prisoners and gathering a nice breakout team." The entryway door is still open, held there by Alan. Kira simply gestures to the door if anyone wants to actually leave."

Temulin sighs. "Ma'am. I'm not cracking wise because I'm not treating this seriously. I'm cracking wise because if I don't people start treating me like I'm evil incarnate." Beat, "I'm evil reincarnate, thank you very much." Though she tries to pass that off as a joke, it's clearly something she believes to be true; and darkness seeps from her into a faintly red aura. The Dark Knight glances to the others. "Temulin of the Dotharl Tribe. Adventurer." She introduces herself for the sake of those she doesn't know yet.

Serrah lets out a soft sigh. "I'm helping, I'm helping," she says irritably. "I'm just ..." She shakes her head. "Eh, never mind. I'm, uh, Serrah Delany. Countess of House D'Ambrosio," she adds bitterly.

She does a slight double-take at Temulin's reincarnation, then shrugs. She nods to Dante, strolls along with him for a moment, and then seems to fade into the shadows. ... In the relatively bright lighting of the facility, the darker patch of shadow moving along through the hallway is fairly obvious.

"I'm serious about this, though I would think you have better security so a jailbreak doesn't lead to half the Obsidian Caabal escaping. Please tell me that not every door can be opened with the same key," Benedicta's hoping they didn't cheap out on the security. "Hey Kira, it looks you made a new friend..." She looks at Temulin and then Serrah as she fades into the shadows. "Am I the only one here who can't do that trick?"

    "Temmy's got it right. I never take things seriously." Dante chuckles. He makes his way down the hall, "Dante, devil hunter, if anybody's askin'." He waves absently. "Let's just put foot to this guy's ass and go home."

    Alan pipes up at Benedicta's question. "I can't either." Of course, the apprentice looks like some sort of Greco-Roman angel with the toga, bird wings, and weird bow. Alan introduced himself earlier when greeting the hunters and taking them to Kira's office.
    Kira nods to Alan, who closes the door. "I hope you all remember the password to get out from the briefing." It was 'teddy bear'. 'Teddy bear'. It was necessary to prevent Grau from impersonating one of the people and getting loose.

"The name is Temulin." The dark knight draws her blade and turns towards Dante. "You got that?" She sounds serious about this, clearly mispleased with the nickname. Otherwise, she keeps following along, going quiet as she listens. To the mention of passwords, she simply nods; her gaze clearly focused on scanning her surroundings.

Serrah's hand momentarily sticks out of the liquid shadow, and gives Alan a thumbs-up. It's kind of hard to see what she's doing or where she's looking, given the whole 'turned into a shadow' thing, but she's staying reasonably close to the group, and presumably she's watching as broadly as she can.

    "Mmhmm." Dante nods. "Yeah, sure thing." He says at Temulin with amusement. Clearly, he's not easily shaken. In any case, he definitely remembers the password. He still has his gun taken out, just in case the shadows jump out at the group. "So how long's this guy been at it, anyways?"

"Since everyone else is doing introductions, I'm Benedicta. I'm not sure how long he's been in a member of the Cabal, but we locked him a few months ago after he tried to recruit Alan," She explains for the others who weren't here. "Did the Order find out anything more?" Her attention turns towards Kira as she says that.

    Kira says "He's been loose for at least an hour since the guard was recovered." The corridors of the prison are arranged in interlocking L shapes, making it defensible in the event of a mass breakout, but lousy for line of sight. The group comes across what would be unusual given the bright lights and colorful decor so far. It appears to just be a hole to nowhere, some kind of gap in reality. The lights are flickering or dim there.

"Pleasure to meet you all." Temulin asides, and then she notices the strange hole in the ground that clearly shouldn't be there; no other sign of the prisoner. "That's weird." Temulin just goes with her gut, she clads her blade in darkness and then shoves the top feet of her sword into the hole, less so if she notices something earlier than that.

The moving shadow comes to a complete stop. "What the hell is that?" says Serrah's voice. "Hmm ..." The shadow scrunches in on itself, moving further away from everyone else. "Eh, I got balls to spare. Watch out, Dotharl!" A baseball flies towards the hole at a hundred miles per hour, launched with vampiric strength and aimed to miss Temulin's sword, but it doesn't look like it flew out of the shadow. Rather, it looks like it just appeared in midair, as abruptly as a video skipping ahead. The shadow seems to change shape and position at the same instant, equally-abruptly.

    The ball bounces violently out of the nothing hole, the echoing sound of it bouncing following it down whatever hallway lies beyond. Temulin's sword makes a loud... clank against the concrete floor that is apparently under the 'hole'. Not real, clearly.

Benedicta's horn lights up and the rabbit girl watches as Serrah's baseball briefly distorts. "So basically it's some kind of gap in space?" She can't detect the exact type of magic so she's guessing here. "Is it possible for him to hide inside here or would he just go right through it?" It doesn't go down since the sword went through it. "Maybe if he stood perfectly still?"

    "Huh. Any volunteers to go in?" Dante asks, unsure if he should go himself.

    Kira looks at the hole and the experimental prodding. Then she draws her magical book from her side and calls forth a whole lot of shadow tentacles, glancing about suspiciously. "The hole's an illusion. He's nearby."

    "Oh." Dante says, and shrugs his shoulder as he proceeds to walk in. "Okay, asshole, where are you? Come quietly and we won't slap your shit into the next week."

"Crap, I wonder if he made it to distract us?" Benedicta's not sure what else a hole to nowhere would accomplish. She nods at Dante in agreement, "You might as well get back in your cell unless you want a repeat of last time."

    The phantom void vanishes, and a slim figure in gray clothes can be seen running down and around the corner of a hall.

    Dante dashes off after the gray clad person, running in a dead sprint. "FREEZE, ASSHOLE!" He calls out, before lunging to tackle the runner.

"Did he split in two?" Benedicta hears footsteps comes from the other direction and runs in the other direction from Dante. Grayson was likely trying to break the group apart but they did need to go after both halves if he did divide.

Serrah laughs. The laughter, too, skips ahead as the ball vanishes, and the shadow once again slightly changes its configuration. At Kira's warning, she immediately sobers up. "Arright," she says, her shadow moving away to avoid those shadow-tentacles. "What the ..." The shadow starts moving after Dante ... but then when Benedicta starts running in the opposite direction --

(While time is stopped, Serrah glances between Dante and Benedicta, before she makes a snap decision and starts flying after Benedicta.)

-- the shadow abruptly vanishes, and in the same instant, Serrah appears above Benedicta, flying forward at top speed!

    Dante tackles the figure, which he notices is not producing any sound one would associate with a running person. He goes through the illusion, which dissapates as it gets too far for its creator to maintain. A second set of footfalls is now hearable, and Temulin hares off after it, veering off to a side corridor to follow while Benedicta and Serrah follow what they believe to be the *original* set of footfalls. 
    A single exclaimed curse escapes Kira's lips as she sees the capture group scatter when she goes to help Dante up.

    "Oh right. Duplicate." Dante says, as he dusts himself off. He takes Kira's hand and dashes after Temulin. Divide and conquer, baby. He can't leave Temulin to get all the fun after all.

    It seems that Temulin is lost in the corridors, but Dante and Kira are able to follow the footfalls that don't have a visible source. Meanwhile, Benedicta and Serrah are led on a merry chase through the halls.
    Eventually, Dante and Kira, Serrah and Benedicta, are led to the entrance, where they see a collapsed Temulin, apparently having had some kind of nasty throat wound judging from the spatters and pooled blood. The sound of footsteps have stopped, though there's a sudden but subtle breeze in the hall.

Serrah sniffs the air, and glances down at Benedicta. "I think I can smell -- oh shit." She timestop-teleports ahead to Temulin's side, crouching down next to her. "He got Temulin!" she calls out. "... looks like she's still alive ..." She looks around as she senses the breeze. "Damn it. Did he get away!?"

    Dante slides beside Temulin, and produces a green star shaped object. "If you can hear me, chew on this." He says, trying to get the object into Temulin's mouth, forcing her jaw open. "C'mon dammit, chew."

    Something becomes apparent immediately. Serrah might smell blood, but she might realize quickly that it isn't from Temulin. Suspicions would be confirmed as Dante's hands go right through the phantom image of a downed Temulin. 
    Instead what Serrah smells is Kira, who falls to her knees gurgling as blood comes out of her mouth and the cut in her throat, looking shocked. Benedicta can hear the soft rustling of clothes as the hidden Grau attempts to change his position.

    "Shit!" Dante goes from the illusory Temulin to Kira, and tries to get her to chew on the vital star. If she does so, it might save her life, if at least knit together her wound.

Benedicta catches up to the others, she's fast but she can't stop time. Her ears raise up a bit as she sees Temulin but she looks completely startled as black blood comes out of Kira. "Dammit, how did he get the drop on Kira of all people!"

Serrah blinks. "Wait, shit, it's human blood --" She whirls around, staring at Kira, then looks around. "Okay, fucker," she snarls. "Y'know what?" She rises off the ground. "STOP THE WORLD!"

From her own perspective, it looks like a ripple of light erupted out of her, and the world froze and turned purple. She grabs her sports bag, and begins throwing baseballs in all directions, except towards her allies; they become frozen in time the instant they leave her hands.

Everyone else just sees baseballs appear, flying all around them. Oh, and Serrah's abrupt change in posture, of course.

    Getting Kira to chew the vital star is hard, even though she is trying hard to accept the help; her body is starving for air and those instincts are tough to overcome. It feels like it takes forever though mere seconds pass for Dante, but it does happen. Kira's stuck coughing up the contents of her lungs instead of being useful though.
    The balls bounce everywhere and some thud oddly off near the side of the door, and ring heavily on the door. Which, the apprentice being young and inexperienced, *opens* due to the racket. Alan catches a ricocheting ball to the face as he is stunned by the sight of Kira down and the still present illusion of an injured and unconscious Temulin. There's that very very dangerous opening now...

    Dante watches as Kira is heaving out her guts. Relieved, he pats her back comfortingly. "Phew...yeah get it all out." He says, then draws his pistol as he sees Alan smacked in the face with a ball suddenly. "Wait, what just-" Before he can finish his thought, he dashes toward Alan and presses the pistol to the man's temple. "Ah ah ah! Not so fast, hands in the air. You're lucky we can't just cap you right here and now."

Serrah shakes her head. "ALAN YOU DUMBASS WILL YOU -- shit." A pained expression crosses her face at Dante's ... reaction, but then her head jerks towards the oddly-bouncing baseballs. And then after another timestop-jump, her fist is swinging at the "space" they seemed to bounce off of. She can't punch someone while time is stopped; it just resumes time. Still, it's probably a surprise, if she's right.

Benedicta's tempted to chase after Grayson, but if he can get the drop on Kira he can easily get the drop on her as well. Still, it could lead to more problems if other prisoners were freed as well. Her attention then turns towards Dante and Alan, "Stop!" She tries to closer but she's stunned in her tracks by his actions.

    Three things happen.
    Alan is stepping into the prison, hands up and a very very shocked expression on his chiseled face. He bumps into an unseen figure and gets shoved towards Dante as Serrah's punch hits what she can only assume is Grayson's arm as he tries to squeeze by Alan. And then the door is yanked shut.

    Suddenly, Dante draws his second pistol, jamming it in what he hopes is Grayson's face. He also realizes he just threatened Alan for no reason, and that he just fucked up. "Oh. Shit, sorry man." He says unexpectedly softly, before he stuffs Ivory at the unseen figure. Hopefully in Grayson's face, too. Or his junk, either's preferable.

Serrah's punch, quick as a wink, turns into a grab. A very firm grab, one which is ... most likely a bit firmer than necessary, actually. If she's successful, it might actually be enough to bruise Grayson. "Hi there!" she growls.

Benedicta recovers from the shock and moves in closer, tentacles growing out of her back. She might not be able to see Grayson, but he would have hard time doding as the newly formed tentacles begin to smack the air around her and try to locate exactly where he is.

    The entrance to the prison clicks shut, effectively trapping everybody in until Alan's relief would arrive. With a pistol pointed at her head and an iron grip on her arm, one of Grayson's alter-egos, a woman with raven-dark hair and dressed in all white, uncloaks her illusion, effectively surrendering.

    "You lose." Dante just says, pressing the gun to Grayson's forehead. He doesn't move an inch for the moment, and it's...rather alarming how Dante's expression is completely neutral, with those two massive pistols threatening Grayson, those icy blue eyes drilling to Grayson's soul.

Serrah takes a deep breath, and gingerly lets go. "You can keep 'er covered, right?" she says to Dante. "Because if not, I'm ..." Her expression sours. "... probably ... gonna have trouble with my ever-draining 'humanity' and my ability to hold back my bullshit vampire urges. Shit." She looks uncertainly at the door.

    "I got her. Or him. Or them. One of those things." Dante says, jaw torqued and tone ice-cold.

"Hopefully them, or one is still lose..." Benedicta's not sure if Grayson can turn other forms when the two of them are both fused. She keeps the tentacles tightly wrapped around Susan as she waits for medical help to arrive for Kira.

Serrah pokes at the door. "Also, is this thing airtight?" she says. "Because ..." Once again, she shifts into shadow, and slips through the cracks.

Then she opens up the door from outside. "I just found a security hole," she says flatly. "I mean, if you ever need to hold a vampire from my world."

    Susan Swartz simply smiles calmly at Dante as she's told that she lost. "Did we?"

    Dante shrugs. "Dunno, I could kill you right here. No more bodydouble shenanigans."