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Artie climbed out of the rear passenger seat and nodded. "Got it boss," he said through his synthesiser. The ground curved up into a steep hill. He looked up and squinted. He'd have to go around to avoid being a target the whole way up. "It's a mile or so if I take the route with cover and all uphill. I'll need a bit of time. The ground is rough. This isn't jogging in the grounds." As he spoke, he was pulling on a backpack, straps snugged tight and picked up a long rifle in a case before doing a final pat down to ensure that his personal weapons - electric batons, knives, pistol - were in place. “How likely do you think it is they’ll have backup?” Jubilee mused as she watched Artie get ready. She’d piled into the back of the Jeep with their gear and took the opportunity to pop up and stretch. “Might be a good idea if I tag along and play bodyguard, melter of random incoming bullets.” "What's the likelihood that they don't?" Artie asked. Taking that as a 'yes', he grabbed a box of Quest bars as well as a handful of goo packets from the box of general supplies on the floor, stuffing those into his backpack for Jubilee. ... Julio glanced around at his grandparents and the other brujos, still deep into their spell, and seemingly unaware of what was going on around them. He had to keep this going. For them. So, he took more of what they freely gave him and pushed harder. A sinkhole opened a hundred meters away, taking a portion of the railway down with it. "We can't stop. We're almost done. Get out of here, please!" Artie's synthesizer crackled over the comms, emotionless. "I have a clear shot on the boy," he said. He'd process the ramifications of this later, when he wasn't on a hilltop wondering if he'd survive a landslide. Jubilee for her part had set up slightly above where Artie was placed and was maintaining a view of the area. She had a line of plasma laid out in front of them in a thin multi-coloured strip that crackled in the humid air but she’d be able to raise it almost instantly if anyone decided to protest their placement. ... "I have a shot," Artie repeated. The hillside shook, small rocks starting to roll down. The ground was rolling under her feet, waves of motion that sent Marie-Ange crashing hard to her hands and knees. The earth between her fingers crumbled and liquified and her hands sunk into the deep black mud. As she pulled them out, they bled black and deep mocha brown and cream and rippling orange and red. She screamed, ready for pain and it came out as a breathy squawk, more like the cackle of a bird than the scream of a woman. Everywhere Marie-Ange could see was ruins, earth rising and crashing like tidal waves. Massive cracks swallowed her friends, Amanda and Topaz fell screaming into the depths of the jungle. Gabriel ran, sprinting ahead of falling trees until he misstepped into a quickly forming pool of scorching mud. Artie went silently into the ground, swallowed by cracks, Jubilee clung from a cliff face, fingers glowing as she tried to claw her way up. Amidst the chaos, a pool of calm surrounded Felicia, a flat piece of slate her raft in an ocean of destruction. Marie-Ange did scream then, and the slate she could see in her vision repeated itself under Felicia, solid and cool and damp. “No!” Felicia screamed, swaying at the effort as blood dripped down her face. She fell, knees hitting hard on her little island. “Don’t take the shot! I can fix-“ she forced out, as finally the ground beneath her cracked. "Got it!" Artie held the shot and shifted his sights to the mercenaries, still not shooting but mapping out their positions. He almost -- almost --- the sight lines sucked. Unlike with the boy at the focus of the ritual, he just didn't have a good line on any of them. Almost. He breathed in. Held it, an island of stillness on the side of the hill and squeezed the trigger as the earth moved around them. One of the shooters fell.
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