Rum Valley bar (Thieves meet up)

[Gail Strafer]

[Hey guys, I think I'm going to have the rest of us get into a separate battle one street over, so that we'll have things to do while we're waiting on Relic to catch up. If all else fails, I guess we could say he kills Ajax offscreen and takes over. What do you think?]

[Nail Strafer]

[Since Relic will be gone for a while we're going to go ahead with the plan I outlined in my Gail post.]

As Nail watched Priscilla and Ajax go at it, he couldn't help but think about how stupid this was. Why were they attacking their enemy head on? Who did that any more? However, the answer occurred to him even as he thought about the question. Priscilla and Relic were from an age where you were meant to fight honorably and there were still a lot of rules for waging warfare. But those rules didn't mean anything now. Nail knew that better than anyone.

So, over the fighting, he put some fingers to his mouth and whistled to a pack of rebel Guild members just standing off to the side, watching the fight. Once he had their attention, he waved for them to follow him over to the next street over.

"Come on! Let's flank them!"

Since Ajax was sufficiently occupied, the others appeared ready to fight. One of their toughest fighters was occupied now and the bar might be easier pickings because of it. Loud footsteps resounded off of the buildings as Nail led his small army in a charge.

As he did so, he spoke to SOLIS.

"SOLIS, give me a layout of the streets leading to the bar. Predict the best route to attack it from."

[Giichi Twinkieland]

[I'm going to post as Giichi so all my characters are back to back. SOLIS, you can post after me, then Terrador and then Am.]

Meanwhile, the mongoose watched the fight from a distance with binoculars. Giichi would hear a sharp intake of breath from his friend.

"There's a group breaking off! They must be getting ready to do a sneak attack!"

"Let me see..." Giichi said quickly, taking up the binoculars.

As he did so, he couldn't help but notice the one who appeared to be rallying them. A gray canine of some sort, dressed in a nice collared shirt and khakis wielding a handgun. Strange getup for a street fight, but Giichi couldn't help but feel like he'd seen him somewhere before. He looked like the guy that Giichi recruited to help get his car back. What was his name? Gail Strafer? Anyway, they had work to attend to.

"All right...we need to get guys watching the side streets too. See to it."

Giichi promptly turned back around, rushed through the bar, and ran to the car to grab Terrador.

"Come on man, it's showtime. Follow me."

Giichi would quickly lead Terrador back through the bar. As they stepped back out into the street again, he would discuss his plans with his friend.

"The traitors are going to attack this place from the side streets. We need to shore up our defenses, so-- AW CRAP!"

The 'aww crap' comment came from seeing Am walking straight up to the Guild loyalist defensive line. What was this guy thinking?! You don't just run up to a bunch of heavily-armed men ready for war! Sure enough, every gang member in the vicinity promptly pointed their weapons at Am. He now had a few guns trained on him. Am was very lucky they had decided to NOT shoot first and ask questions later. One of them, a heavyset boar, walked up to confront Am with a machete before he could get any closer.

"Don't know any Giichi, punk. Leave. NOW."

The boar got a very surprised look as Giichi pushed straight past him and stood in front of AM. Immediately the boar's confrontational mood melted away and he suddenly became much friendlier.

"Giichi! Speak of the devil! So who's this?"

Now instead of scowling he cast a smile at Am.

"His name's Am, and he's here to help."

"Well...if that's the case, the more the merrier."

Satisfied, the boar and the other Guild loyalists turned their weapons off of Am. Meanwhile, Giichi wiped the sweat off his face, before he turned around to scowl himself at Am.

"Geez, you're lucky they didn't shoot you into swiss cheese! Don't do that again!"

[SOLIS]

[That works for me.]

Despite repeated attempts, the only thing coming from trying to gain access to the mech wirelessly just weren't getting anywhere. At least one couldn't say it didn't try, and it appeared it's rather ominous 'friend' had that situation handled anyway.

Meanwhile, Nail was requesting it now map out the nearby streets and plan out some way for him and what it could only assume to be subordinate entities. The "best route to to attack" was an interesting problem, and the simplest solution was the most direct. However, it's experience with Nail so far suggested he would do better in armed combat against a distanced opponent, and a simple guesstimation of Nail's subordinates suggested they would be more suited to subterfuge.

A quick scan of the cameras revealed a door along the side of the building that seemed unguarded. Perhaps the subordinates could sneak in through there, though Nail himself could fit in several places and picking an optimum one would require more experience than SOLIS had.

Across it's screen, SOLIS drew a simplified 3D view of the area they were currently in, black with white lines outlining the cubes that stood in for buildings. A thicker bright blue line lead from several dots around the building, with some text summing up the situation, along with a message explaining that it could not find a good solution for Nail. Hopefully that would suffice for the time being.

[Terrador Bellator]

Terrador had exited the car. It was a bit too small for hin to just sit in there. When Giichi entered the area, the echidna was standing with his back against a wall. His arms were crossed and his head was slightly lowered. He was lost in his thoughts as usual and like most times, he was suddenly snapped out of it. He spared a glance at the sand cat and followed him upon request.

Giichi's words to the Geomancer were lost as he saw Am had nearly gotten himself killed. Terrador stayed back and simply gave a nod of disappointment to the alien. After the guns lowered and things eased down, Terrador approached the two.

"So Giichi. What is the plan?" He asked, ignoring the fact Am was nearly killed.

[Nail Strafer]

[Three day absence rule]

As SOLIS populated the new map, Nail immediately came to a halt and raised a fist up in the air. The fist in the air was a silent signal used amongst armies and special ops teams for the unit to hold. You did that so a vocal command wouldn't alert the enemy to what you were up to. Unfortunately these were street punks, so not all of them understood the signal. One of them actually bumped into Nail, since he didn't expect their leader to suddenly stop running. The hybrid stumbled forward, frowned at the punk, but brushed it off. He needed to attend to the new map.

SOLIS apparently hadn't come up with a good attack route. Nail wasn't terribly surprised though as he ran along. This thing didn't look like it was made for warfare anyway. However, showing a map of the surrounding streets and alleyways was more than enough data to plot a plan of attack. Knowledge was power, after all. Looked like most of the routes were either small alleyways between buildings, or they could take the wider streets.

The alleyways would be easier to slip through unnoticed, but those had the potential to become bloodbaths. Being crammed into a small space would make them easy prey for explosives or machine guns (assuming the enemy had those). Meanwhile the streets would offer more room for maneuverability, but that would also make them a lot easier to see and pick off at a distance.

After thinking about it for about ten seconds, Nail had a rough idea of what he wanted to do now. He just needed some information. He turned around to address his followers.

"Tell me...do you know what armaments does your gang have at the bar? I want to know what we'll be up against."

A weasel quickly stepped forward. "Mostly whatever we can scrounge off the streets. Lots of clubs, knives, tonfas, and stuff."

"Guns?"

The weasel shrugged. "Just what's in the gunshops. Handguns...shotguns...hunting rifles."

"Do they have anything automatic? Explosives?"

"I don't know...but we didn't know about that robot either. Ajax might have had other things hidden away for something like this."

The weasel looked pretty worried when he mentioned this. In fact, the dread was somewhat contagious as it spread through the mob. As for Nail, he simply chewed his lip. He didn't like unknowns. But he'd dealt with lack of information before. And he already had an idea for how to deal with this.

"Okay, here's what we'll do." The hybrid spoke with the authority of a general rallying his troops. He kept his voice very even and clipped to let them know he was still in control. "Half of you, march up the next street over and see what they throw at us. When I get a look at what we're up against, I'll get our second half to make their move. Either we'll support you, or we'll infiltrate through the side alleys while you keep them busy by attacking head on. Got it?"

There were hesitant nods and grunts of agreement. Nail could have done something more complicated if he'd been given time to plan, but it was the best he could come up with on the spot. The plan sounded simple enough for these street punks to understand. He didn't want to try boggling their heads with a lot more details.

"Okay, so who's going to be in group one?"

No one stepped forward. Everyone anxiously looked at each other, waiting for anyone else to step forward. Nail frowned as he sighed under his breath. He had to remind himself again these weren't trained soldiers, but simple criminals. They had never learned to keep their fear of battle under control, and they'd be harder to whip into shape. However, they appeared to have responded positively to Nail taking the lead, so he supposed that's what he'd have to do.

"Fine...I'll take the lead of the first group to start out. But once I know what we're up against, I'm going to pull back to give other directions. Got it? So who's coming with me?"

This time, a few punks stepped forward. They looked a bit more heavyset, and they had bigger weapons too. That gave him an idea, but Nail decided he'd wait till they hit the street first.

"All right...first group with me. Second group, wait till I get back and I'll give you more instructions."

Nods all around, Nail led his party to the next thoroughfare leading to the bar.

"SOLIS...if you can, try to keep tabs on incoming hostiles. I need to know where the enemy is if you can give me that information."

[Giichi Twinkieland]

Giichi shrugged a bit and brushed the back of his head as Terrador asked him what the plan was.

"Well...I'm not really a leader around here. I'm just one of the grunts, even if I do have a little popularity, heheh. I guess we wait and see which way the enemy is coming from and try to hold them up as much as you can. Do you think you'll be able to help out with your earth powers? Maybe you can make a barricade or something."

Speaking of the enemy...a report went through the Guild loyalists very quickly.

"Our scouts say the enemy's about to come on down Gold Street! We need to hold them up there!"

A group of Guild members broke off from the pack around the bar to shore up defenses on the next street over.

"Well..." Giichi sighed, as he looked at the group taking off. "How about we join them?"

[SOLIS]

Seeing as Nail appeared focused elsewhere, SOLIS assumed speaking entirely through text would be more of a hindrance, For the time being, it kept it's eyes on the surroundings and did it's best to estimate where everything was. In a rare attempt to speak up, it told him "My range is rather limited, but I will do my best."

[For the time being, SOLIS can only serve as a tool in fights, so I'm letting Nail do anything with it that doesn't involve what could be constituted as conscious thought. Additionally, I may skip a few posts because they end up being like this one a lot of the time: Short and kind of uninteresting. This will change soon so bear with me. <3]

[Terrador Bellator]

(Crap! I had no idea it was my post -_- My aplogies for the delay)

Terrador simply nodded as the sand cat spoke.

"I will assist you any way I can." he said with a weak smile. The echidna watched the group disperse than glanced back at Giichi. With nothing but a nod of his head, the Geomancer followed the group without even waiting for either the cat or Am.

[Echo]

Am nervously laughed, his eyes as big as saucers, as he suddenly became a target "Should've brought an over-shield".

"Am..that was stupid. Don't get comfortable." Sarah chimed in.

"Alright alright! A-game got it..." Am growled not so much under his breath.

"oh..and remember you only have a little over an hour left..."

"oh crap..time flies doesn't it?"

Am suddenly became aware of the sudden change in attitude around him...now he was being yelled at by Gichii...wonderful.

"Ya know, if you had waited for me like someone who had some sense in their head instead of acting like a hatchling and showing out in your vehicle I wouldn't have had to take that risk. Tell me, just how was I supposed to get back in touch with you?"

Am crossed his arms in front of his chest and sighed letting off tension. "so, what do you want me to do?"