A trail of aching derrières- next time they'll be more thoughtful

[gone_byebye]

The door opens onto an expanse of asphalt, steel, and glass. Nearby a sign reads:

WELCOME TO WHITE FLINT MALL
BEST PRICES IN THE DC AREA

4708 BETHESDA AVENUE
CHEVY CHASE, MD

It's a big parking lot, with the mall itself only visible off in the distance. Ray gives it the squint-eye before turning to the others. "Okay, people," he says. "This is it. Johnny says it's underground. Egon's best estimates indicate three miles down. Are we good?"

Comments

[gone_byebye]

The lead centipede shudders for a moment; then, its forward circuits overloaded, its head explodes. The bot collapses.

Two other, smaller centipedes consider its fallen form before swarming over to start picking it apart. The two remaining centipedes are rather larger and faster, and keep on coming.

[spark-girl.livejournal.com]

The ones swarming on the fallen centipede aren't a concern, for now. The possibility of more coming after it is. Agatha takes a quick glance around the corridor.

"Will we need to use this passage again?"

She delivers another eye shot to the nearest centipede.

[gone_byebye]

"Uh, I think we're kind of-"

"Ray," snaps the local Winston, "did you see the other side of the closet? Maintenance hallways!"

"Yeah, Winston, but is Fido gonna fit?"

[blond-w-brain.livejournal.com]

"Fido," Blond-Egon says, "is remarkably malleable. You should see the well he came out of." He pulls the flute again and plays it, and Fido, with a 'wurrf?', begins to squeeze through the closet. However, he's still, well, a dragon, and there's some bendy noises.

Perhaps more importantly, he still has Peck in his mouth, and Walter is whacking his head against damn near everything on one side of the closet as he goes.

"We'll cover here, Ray!"

Black-hair-Egon adds, "This should give me some fascinating data, really."

[gone_byebye]

Ray beams. "Okay, then. Agatha?" The centipedes are frantically trying to put themselves back together. "Go to town. Everybody else, let's get the heck out of Dodge!"

[stilljustandrew]

*The group follows Fido through the closet and into the hallway, picking up the pace as it widens.*

*Some distance along it, they may hear rapidly approaching footsteps coming towards them down a side corridor. It's not local staff, though; it's the hunched-over man they saw earlier, this time with an armload of fiberoptic cable in addition to the fanfold printout paper. He's still muttering, something about "blind fools," and he passes the group without even a cursory glance this time.*

*Andrew blinks after him.*

...okay that was weird.

[spark-girl.livejournal.com]

Agatha's sent her dingbots after the rest, with their load of recovered tech. Once all the rest are a safe distance back, she quickly fires at several points on the ceiling.

Three support beams and the sprinkler system are hit.

The centipedes will have just enough time to look up in confusion before being crushed, and the resulting pile of debris will make it extremely difficult if not impossible for more to follow them.

Satisfied with her work, Agatha runs after the others, giggling and grinning ear to ear. She loves her work.

[redsnout.livejournal.com]

Soon enough, there's more people joining them in the hallway. The two remaining ninjas bolt towards the group, running as fast as their legs can carry them-but given the amount of running they've been doing, it's getting harder.

Raptor Red reappears as well, chasing after the ninjas and now sporting more red on her than just her snout patches. At the sight of the group she picks up speed, turning slightly in an attempt to keep the ninjas cornered on one side. "Khoh! Khoh! Khoh!"

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

There was a blast of ecto, and hopefully there'd only be one ninja.

...And why did he have to urge to pick a ninja up and throw him to see if the dinosaur would fetch?

[gone_byebye]

And there was, indeed, only one ninja left. The other put on a fresh burst of speed, or tried to, anyway.

Exhausted ninja from Ninj-O-Mart. Rampaging dinosaur. Perhaps you would like to do the math.

[redsnout.livejournal.com]

The raptor couldn't help but let out a startled squawk at the blast, momentarily distracting her from the remaining ninja. But her attention soon shifted as the ninja headed for another corridor. She followed after, returning to the group a few moments later.

Despite not having much in the way of facial expression, Red looked quite pleased with herself.

[gone_byebye]

"Good girl," says Ray warily. "Very good girl. Thank you, we appreciate that."

He turns around and looks to the others. "Are the rest of us okay? Who've we got left to deal with?"

[wyrd-fox.livejournal.com]

"The head honcho," Foxtrot says. "The guy who put Peck on your tail and gave him the okay for all his little dirty tricks."

The kitsune grins at Peck, showing a mouth full of pointy teeth. "I know just where his office is, too."

[doc-venkman.livejournal.com]

Peter yelped some at Winston, and muttered under his breath after that.

He was definitely smirking at that punch of Ray's.

"Nice form."

But then running feet, time to head out. Only what...the...hell?

His eyes widened at the robotic centipedes.

"Have I mentioned lately how much I hate bugs?" The only good thing about it? At least they weren't giant robotic cockroaches.

So time to boogie.

He yelled to his Egon, "Don't worry too much about the data. See ya back at the homestead." It was partly a goodbye, partly an order that he wanted all of their people to get back safely.

He then ran after the others.

Just in time to see the last ninja get into some trouble, and hear Foxtrot's remark.

"So what's this about dickless' bossman?"

[lt-naraht.livejournal.com]

Naraht had been playing rear-guard. His huge bulk filled the corridor almost completely, making a rather effective barrier against the robo-centepedes or anything else trying to get them from behind.

"Do we have time?" he asked. "I'd love to pay him a visit, but I have a feeling things are going to be getting even more crazy down here. Particularly if they manage to get their defense forces organized."

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

"Uh...considering that those ground forces had these energy guns that'll probably be a lot more harm to anyone who isn't free-floating and intangible than to me and FX, we should probably haul," Danny said, flying up the hallway to see what was ahead.

[blond-w-brain.livejournal.com]

"That's an excellent idea, Daniel," says Blond. The three adjust their glasses in mirror to each other. "Call back!"

Brown watches behind, occationally sniping with his proton pack around the Horta while commenting on the sad state of the robopede's construction.

Black, however, is watching the ceiling. "a-HA!" he says, and then sends a black from a proton pack skittering across the ceiling. It burns off some tiles, a camera, cuts a hole through a pipe causing water to briefly splash out over the crew, and then goes out. And then he gives Peter that look, the look that says, "I dare you to say that again, Peter Charles Venkman."

[spark-girl.livejournal.com]

Agatha's in a somewhat more serious mood now, and is keeping her gun at the ready. Her clanks are keeping up well -- the latest batch having been made from on-hand materials, there's some interesting tech included in the design.

As always, she's protective of them, and steps between them and the water. She's dripping a bit, but doesn't need to worry about rust prevention.

[gone_byebye]

Two of the smaller robot centipedes had managed to work their way out of the rubble. Egon Brown got one of them. Egon Black, well.... Let's just say the centipedes really weren't designed to be waterproof and call his blast a net positive.

From here on out it's running until the gang encounters a bank of elevators. There's some fuss over how to fit all of them into one car. The issue gets resolved by Ray's suggestion of elevator racing ("we used to do it all the time at Columbia!" "Ray, weren't you fifteen when you started college?" "What's that got to do with it, Winston?"). By the time they reach the other end of the shaft, so many lights and non-essential systems have powered off and winked out that the locals wouldn't have a prayer of catching them.

Ray grins at the panicked bureaucrats who're all struggling to reach the exit first. "Guys?" he asks over his shoulder. "Does anyone mind if I invoke a particular movie memory just now?"

He's got one hand on the proton thrower.

[wyrd-fox.livejournal.com]

Foxtrot takes one look at Ray and starts laughing his head off.

"If anyone does," he says, "I'll smack them for you! Let 'er rip!"

[gone_byebye]

Ray nods and steps forward, twisting the proton pack's intensity dial up to 11.

(Yes, these go to 11.)

"Everybody-"

He takes careful aim at the doors at the far end of the hallway, takes a deep breath, and fires.

"MOVE!!"

[doc-venkman.livejournal.com]

Peter had given Egon a barely innocent look of 'What?' Even though he was definitely not happy about the water.

Funny thing. He seemed drier than most. Weird.

Which made the running part a lot easier, and finally close to the exit.

"Ok, that's the best thing you said all day, Ray!" Peter yelled back to him as he started encouraging the crowd of heroes to beat feet.

[lt-naraht.livejournal.com]

Naraht pulls out in front of the pack and puts on speed as the crowd going through the doors abruptly parts to either side at Ray's "encouragement". Simply put, those doors are too narrow to let a good number of people through at once.

CRASH!

Amazing how proper application of Horta can expand an egress.

[wyrd-fox.livejournal.com]

Foxtrot is the next out...and he skids to a stop when he sees where this door leads. It's an office comlex at first look. But there are a good many more meeting rooms than you'd expect. There are some rather shell-shocked looking people scattered about holding clipboards and pencils.

The kitsune casually strolls up to the front of the office where FC bureaucrats are bolting through the main door...into the mall. He glances at the sign outside and snickers.

"A survey company!" he says. "Figures that a secret, evil organization would use an openly evil company for a front."

[gone_byebye]

Slowly- one by one- the employees of Mid-America Marketing raise their hands over their heads in the universal gesture of 'touchdown'-

Oh, no, wait, sorry, wrong gestural vocabulary set. 'Surrender', more like.

"Please don't shoot," says the woman behind the front desk. "We didn't see anything. We swear."