Lixi jumped as long arms engulfed her, and turned to face whoever now held her. She'd still been staring at the end of the building, watching her brother fade off like a little dot in the distance. She was still so jarred from being grabbed by the big mafioso zombie that she almost cracked martin in the ribs with the wrench, but instead dropped it the instant she recognized him.

"Martin!" she exclaimed, and leaned in against him, rather uncharacteristically. Between her own stupidity almost getting her killed, and the last minute rescue by her brother, whom she hadn't seen since she left heaven, her emotions were beyond twisted. She knew she'd only been away from the group for ten minutes, tops, but it felt much longer, and made her welcome the sight of the tall human who now stood posed to protect her. "Where's whom?" She questioned halfheartedly, her head resting against him absently.

The blush deepened, and his face was beyond pink. He struggled to think of what she was talking about. "I heard gunfire. And I thought that... well, the zombies and stuff. Maybe one of them learned how to use them." Saying it out loud, it sounded very stupid. He should have gone with his first idea: that it was the supposed ethereal cleanup crew. His mouth twisted into what was kind of a smile, but he was still feeling too worried about her for it to come across as much more than that. He pulled her closer, and ran his fingers through her hair. "I... I was worried is all. Just worried."

Her heart beat quickened a little at his fingers in her hair, no matter how innocent the action was meant to be. It had been far to long since she'd been this physically close to anyone in an affectionate way. This is not the time nor the place... she reminded herself. Gathering her thoughts she leaned her head back to look up at him, her usual confident and warm smile she'd sported often toward him returning. Standing on tiptoe, she kissed his cheek, just barely catching the corner of his lips.

"This isn't the time for these kind of thoughts" She whispered in his ear before pulling herself away to stand a few inches back from him. "If we get through this, and get out of this forsaken city alive, we'll have to disappear for a while. Bottle of something, wine or whiskey, doesn't matter, and some quiet, peaceful time without zombies or demons or angels with a vendetta." She knew such a time would never truly exist for her, but it was nice to think about. "Now come on, lets get the other two and head inside."

Martin nodded. Yeah, he thought. Probably should focus on the surviving thing. He smiled, just glad that things were alright, though still perplexed by the gunfire. He took her by the hand and lead her back through the trailers, very much resisting the urge to look back to see if her shirt shifted oh-so-slightly. Noble intentions or not, it was hard to resist temptation of free boobs.

When they got out from behind the trailers the other two had edged closer, noticing that Lixi and Martin had disappeared behind them. Jason noticed that Martin lead Lix by the hand, and also her state of near-undress, and immediately felt bitter. "Gee, I wonder what they were doing back there," he mumbled so that neither of them could hear. But Adja, who was near enough to hear him gave him an angry glare.

"Death everywhere, and you're falling to the green-eyed monster," she said quietly. "Give them some credit." Though, as she said it, she started to doubt Martin's restraint. She didn't know Lixi enough to say that she wouldn't do something stupid, but Martin sure would have.

"Its okay, everyone," Martin said with the utmost sincerity as they came closer. "There are no zombies behind the trailers."

"Uhh... good," Adja said, turning around so that she wouldn't see Lixi's state of near indecency. "Let's go, then."

"Anymore..." lixi quickly added. "I made a grave miscalculation and got snagged. By a big dead mob thug. I did get some info out of the whole ordeal though, but it can wait till we get inside.I can tell you that as of ten minutes ago nothing inside is capable of moving or harming us, so let's just get up some baracaids and do a quick queck of all the exits then get to work"

She let go of Martins hands as they rounded the car. The sliding automatic doors were swung open on there pivots, brobably from someone trying to get out in a hurry who had burst through before they could open. She gave them a quick push and popped them back into place. She smiled as they resumed there usual course of action and slid the rest of the way open. "Power msut still be on". She figured the sweepers would probably try to keep it on for at least one more day to track down survivors by the lights they may carelessly turn on for comfort. Once all 4 were safely inside, she turned the control on the door to cause it to stay shut, then slid the long metal pin through the eyelets on both sides to bar it off.

"Someone wanna go batten down the metal rolling door where they bring the carts in?" She asked, then turned to peer in at the carnage in the store. Oh sweet mother of night... did Miah really do all this? her heart heavied at the pile of bodies just inside the door, all with heads removed. There had to be at least 2 dozen there. She sank even lover when she saw the line of blood spatters on the wall by the small fast food restaraunt within the store. He must have lined up the survivors to execute them. Lixi couldn't help but wonder what her sweet older brother had become.

Pulling her head back into the game, she approached the pile, and gave a hard yank to the arm of one of the people ina blue employee vest to topple it from the stack. She quickly searched it, then pulled it out of the way. She did this to several more till she finally had enough of several items she'd been stacking up behind her. Returning to the others, she handed them each a clunky black walky talky with a corded headset attached, then held up a bulky key ring she'd pulled off the manager on duty. "At least these should make life a little easier while we're in here. Let's get stocked up, get something to eat while we're in here, and do what we gotta do. I really wanna get to where we're going before dark"

Martin gave an impressed whistle as they entered the store. He'd seen a lot of dead bodies before, but this was the first time he's seen this many of them all at once. The carnage was simply overpowering, as was the smell. Between the heat inside the sheer number of them, the smell of rotting flesh was too much. Martin could just barely handle it, but Adja had to cover her nose and still gagged. She held the headset awkwardly between her forefinger and thumb, compulsively wiping it off with her shirt (though there was no visible bloodspatter on it, she felt that it must be cleaned regardless.)

Martin was already wearing it (much to his sister's disgust), and was taking a stroll through the store to see what was worth looting. Immediately, he began stocking up on cigarettes. Jason headed towards the back to get ahold of one of the higher-end-but-still-cheap computers.

It occurred to Adja, and probably Martin too, that they had not yet eaten anything and it was getting late in the day... a very long, eventful day. Food would be necessary, though it would be difficult to have any sort of appetite amongst the dead, and eventually the sewers if that was going to be their next brilliant plan. She grabbed one of the travel bags from the luggage section and began raiding the grocery section.

As the group dispersed, Lixi called after Jason, who was heading to the back. "Hey! Heads up!" She tossed him the massive ring of keys she took of the manager. "Might take some guess work, but I'll bet you'll be able to get into any cage, office, or locked case you need. Walky if you have trouble and I'll search through some more pockets to try and find a different set."

Jason, having nearly took the set of oddly shaped keys attached to a magnetic bar to the face when Lixi tossed them, walked off toward the back again, still grumbling under his breath about the entire situation. Lixi sighed at this. She was startign to feel like no matter how she tried to protect yet include him in there work he was still just going to being ticked off at whatever she did. She usually wouldn't have concerned herself with what a charge thought of her, but with this group being the closest she'd had to friends in over 500 years, she felt compelled to play the popularity game, terrible at it though she was.

Hooking up her own walky she headed for the women's clothing department. Of coarse a place like this won't have a decent coat this time of year, but I can at least come up with something a little less... showy. She grabbed a fresh set of non-descript basic undies and a sports bra, and a pair of form fitting heavy denim jeans. The fabric may not stop a bullet, but it'd at least be a little harder for a zombie to rip through. Lixi eyed up shirts for longer than she probably needed to, trying to find something that wouldn't meet the same fate as her last one in a confrontation. Finally she settled on a dark green racer back sports tank top (hoping it would survive her wings should she need to materialize them again, as that was what started her decent to a near peep show before). From the mens section she snagged a heavy black work shirt that felt like it was made out of some kind of canvas or heavier material, once again hoping to stand up to zombie claws and teeth, then headed to the restroom in the back, snagging a couple towels and wash clothes from the home good section as she went.

"What the hells all that?" Jason called to her as he saw her pass by the electronics department on her way. "What happened to 'quickly' and 'essentials'?"

Lixi smiled at him and called over her shoulder, not stopping to discuss it. "Just because I'm not human doesn't mean I'm not a women. I still feel dirty and gross after this much contact with dead rotten corpses and slimy oil demons, and I feel I've earned the right to feel clean and fresh for at least a few minutes before we go do it all over again."

She emerged a few minutes later, her wet hair wrapped in one of the towels feeling quite accomplished, (washing it in that small sink with it's automatically shutting off water had been no feat) and headed for the sporting goods section. "How's it coming everybody? Jason, when you get all the cases open that you may need, let me know, I want those keys when you're done." She smiled as she stood in front of a large, locked down gun case. Usually she wasn't one for these things. Maybe it was the human mind set of 'I'm safe if I have the biggest stick' wearing off on her, or maybe she'd just seen a few to many zombie movies in the recent years, but the idea of running through Apocalyptia with two big guns harnessed to her back got her a little excited.

"Actually, I think I'm good. I kinda want to wonder to the back and see what's in the office or lock down in the back, but I'm fairly certain that not only did I get my laptops hard drive out of it's melted body and hooked into an external hard drives case, but I may even have pieced together a respectable machine to do what we need it to do, presuming we can find any kind of a network out there to let us get what we want without having to be in city hall or whatever planning office has the maps."

"Fantastic! If anyone can get it you can. I'll come by and grab the keys in a bit, unless one of you 3 is heading this way soon. I'm over in the hardware/sporting goods area." She'd meandered away from the case and worked her down into hardware. Creative new thoughts for 'Improvised weaponry' flowing through her mind. She grabbed a heavy duty leather tool belt, and started loading up. 2 heavy claw hammers, one on either side, a leathermen multi-tool, and a few long, hefty looking screw drivers seemed useful enough. She also grabbed a box of the biggest nails she could find, and headed back for sports.

Lixi grabbed two wooden baseball bats, one long, heavy one, and one shorter lighter one, probably meant for younger children. Bracing one on the other, she pounded several of the large nails through each of them. The make shift clubs appealed to her on some Neanderthal level. I've spent how many human lifetimes on this planet living amongst them, yet I'm just now starting to understand some of their primitive instincts. Perhaps all angels should have been forced to go through an apocalypse as a human. Maybe then they wouldn't hate them so much. A chest/vest style gun harness befitting of a riot suppression officer finished off her bizarre look. Glancing around a few isles near the tenting supplies, she found a big box of what looked like giant packets of tinfoil. There were at least a dozen of the thermal blankets in the box, hopefully they would be good enough to blanket them should the chopper her brother mentioned come around. Lixi flopped the box and her cave man clubs down on the counter before hopping up to sit next to them. She pulled the towel out of her hair and began fussing with it to pull it up into a high, functional pony tail using a sports style no slip hair tie while she waiting for Jason to give her the all clear on the keys.

Martin had filled a small backpack with cigarettes when Lixi started speaking into the walky. These things were damn useful and he wondered why his boss didn't start implementing them. Of course, they didn't really work outside of a two mile radius and her cohorts were spread all throughout the city. Plus, he supposed, that if someone were to speak about their dealings on a public airwave, that would be far from beneficial. He shrugged the idea off, considering that maybe it was best that this sort of thing be done now, when there was hardly anyone alive at all. But with his bag full of smokes, and the feeling that he'd gotten all the things he needed, he started making his way towards the back. He briefly considered getting a different weapon, but found that he couldn't escape the draw of his nine-iron. Something about the weight of it just felt right.

Adja, of course, being paranoid about her own chances of survival as well as the survival of the others (mostly Jason: Lixi seemed to have a handle on things and she had no doubt that the spirit within Martin would not simply allow its host body to die) stocked up what seemed to be the least heavy foods that would last their time traveling: dried fruit, bread, beef jerky, Spam. Carrying bottled water would have been heavy, but who knew when the next time they would have the opportunity to have it? She grabbed a case of those. She had enough food to last about a week, two weeks if they rationed themselves more economically. There was also an excess of salt. Trite though it may be, it was the one thing that she knew for certain to work, even if only against some evils.

She, on the other hand, discarded her frying pan. It didn't have the weight she would have preferred it to, being made of aluminum. It had taken her more than five hard whacks to smash that zombie's head into the ground... she twitched and then shuddered at the memory of the cranial matter ground into the pavement, and the oddly satisfying CRUNCH that it had made when the skull broke into pieces. She wasn't cut out for this, determined though she might be to survive. Before her nervous breakdown, she'd been a nurse. This was just about as opposite as you could get from being a nurse.

But with her aluminum pan discarded, she would be without a weapon. She wanted something with the same feel, but more weight. She traded it in for a cast-iron skillet, and smiled as she hefted it in her hands. Yes, this would do much more damage, though it would likely slow her down. But she concluded that if she was going to be slowed down she might as well have something useful to defend herself with.

A thought occurred to her. She fumbled with the buttons on the walky, trying to keep her mouth far enough away from it because it still smelled like death. "Do you still want me to try scrying," she asked Lixi. It was mentioned once, and since the place wasn't crawling with legions of the undead there would be more time to get a reading.

"Yeah, that'd be awesome Adja." Lixi sat picking at her nails. She didn't care that they were dirty, but it was unusual for her to have a moment of down time, so it seemed like the right thing to do. She pulled out her little notebook and begin flipping back through notes she'd kept, and copied, and re-copied throughout the ages. For being thousands of years worth of info, it was surprisingly little more than 3/4 of the thick, leather bound, 3x5 spiral memo pad. If she'd kept every detail from each of it's prior incarnation, she easily could have filled volumes, but each time she re-copied it, she kept only the most important, relevant things. Most of it pertained to the situation they were dealing with now in one way or the other. She'd spent lifetimes trying to figure out what went wrong that caused the loss of her original heavenly companions. What lead Joel to snap, or how he got to where he was now. Scattered throughout were notes and descriptions of other strange things she'd encountered, some of which she was sure were the twisted variations of old comrades, all that remained of the bitter deposed angels. Others were things she couldn't even fathom, things her god certainly had not created. "I'm not much good with that stuff, but if you need me for anything let me know. I'll do whatever you need. Same goes for you other two."

She absorbed herself in her notes from the past, as though somehow now maybe they'd reveal some answer she'd missed before.

She was already in the kitchen supplies section, so finding a bowl was hardly a chore. She filled the cheap ceramic bowl with water from the water bottles, figuring that it didn't matter what purity the water had. Seated with the bowl on the ground, and with heavy breaths, tried her very best to clear her mind despite the millions of things that were running through it. She exhaled until her chest ached.

Scrying is never the same way twice, regardless of what the New Age instruction books would have you believe. A person's state of mind is a significant factor, in all forms of divination. The more stressed the reader's mind was, the hard it was to get an accurate reading. Needless to say, Adja needed more than a minute to clear her mind.

Martin pushed his way through to the backroom, feeling like a king with his bag of smokes and his nine-iron. He grabbed a long cart and used his weight and speed to ride it through the crowded warehouse, bumping into every possible thing marked "fragile" that he could manage to run into. Eventually, his adventures in cart-riding brought him to pallet of new freight marked "explosive," and this immediately caught his attention.

Using his foot to stop the cart and immediately abandoning it, he saw no need to hesitate in opening the box, a sadistic toothy grin growing on his face. "Ohohoo," he said delightedly as he discovered the contents. July was still months away, but they already had the PDQ displays full of fireworks. "YES," he exclaimed, filling all excess space in his bag with smoke bombs, bottle rockets, and generally anything else that could feasibly explode. Best. Apocalypse, Ever.

Those should come in handy should you meet another tar demon along the road.

The what? Oh yeah yeah... that too. The voice jarred him a little. Up until just now, Vulture had remained silent. Perhaps sleeping. He wondered if it felt to her as if she were floating upwards on a bubble like it did for him when he was unconscious.



When her nerves were finally steady, Adja could look into the scrying bowl. She felt detached from herself, as though she were watching from outside her body. This was not a scrying technique, but a calming technique: if something was happening, it felt as though it were happening to someone else.

From somewhere outside her body, she gazed into the bowl of water and watched the light dance upon the surface of the water, creating patterns in the stillness. A reader can never say for certain what something in the water means, but there are some things that are almost always read the same way. For example, a swirling black shadow almost inevitably meant something bad.

It certainly was a good thing that this session began with such a universal symbol.

As the black cloud distorted in the light, it became bigger, until it dominated the entire surface of the water. It swallowed the light. She saw four points of light, which she thought represented her traveling party. They danced around the shadow, hiding from it, taunting it until the shadow became angry and swallowed one of them whole. Rather than continuing the fight against the shadow, the other three dispersed in different directions.

She came back from that in-between space like the snapping of a twig.

It was unclear if the shadow indicated death or betrayal, but she had a feeling that it could have very well been both. She already didn't trust anyone. She didn't trust Jason because he seemed a coward, and so far very reluctant to do anything useful. She trusted her brother about as much she trusted that thing in his head. And Lixi was the biggest mystery of all. She seemed to be so full of information, at the most convenient times. It was hard to say whose side she was on.

Or was this betraying person to be... herself? She felt as though she had swallowed a rock. Perhaps it could be prevented.

She shook herself from those thoughts. This would have to be approached carefully.

"Lixi," she said into the walky. "The outcome isn't good. Lots of shadows, all aimed at us. We need to be very careful."

Lixi sighed heavily as she heard Adja over the walkies, then shrugged. "Just us against the world..." ...Princess. she finished the quote internally, and drifted for a moment to her memories of the one who used to say it to her. There contented little band of 'renegade angels' as they used to consider themselves. Traversing any obstacle, be it of earth, heaven, or hell, and trying to prove they could still do some good for the world even without heavens backing. But that was before Rosetta died, before Joel went crazy, before he took her lover from her for revenge. She missed him still. Pain quickly turned to anger towards Joel and she hopped off the counter, focused once more. "Jason, what's your status?" Can I have the fucking keys yet? She felt like destroying something right now... maybe she should just grab a crow bar and pry the case open?

"Almost done. You can have the keys whenever you want em Lix." Jason's voice piped over the walky, making her twitch with the last statement.

"Lixi. Lixi will do just fine Jason. And I'll be over in a second. We should grab some of this perishable food and have ourselves a last supper in the back while we talk about what's coming next. I mean, it's just gonna go to waist, and this place has a McBurger in the front, they should have grills hot enough to cook up some decent cuts of meat fairly quick. Who knows if we'll make it out of the shadows to get a decent steak again, and we still have.." She glanced at the register on the sporting counters lock screen "...6 hours till sunset. May as well live it up while we're temporarily safe at least, we can head out in 3 hours and still be able to get to the dudes house by dusk. Now would be an ideal time for a nap if anyone wants one, just wait till we're all together. Anyone know how to grill?"

She knew food wasn't the most important thing right now, but fresh human blood she'd just been digging through pre-shower was making her hungry, even if she'd never fallen to the level of some of her rapidly demented brothers. for the angels, human blood may as well have been a power tonic. To drink the life force of those made in the image of god was forbidden, as was consuming their flesh, and for good reason. It brought with in not only a mental shifting and dementia, but also a physical change from which they couldn't come back. It was what had happened to Rosetta, and why Lixi had to put her down back then. What drove Rosetta to go down that path, and how she did it for so long without the group knowing was the mystery of the ruin of their group that Lixi still pondered. It didn't seem fair, when she thought back to it, that their god should make them to crave something they couldn't have, but then again, that seemed to be what he was good at. Was he really the good guy at all in the beginning?

Her thoughts came back around as she approached Jason in electronics. Immediately he started spouting out a group of facts and information about the electronic cacophony he'd compiled on the counter. "If I could get this terminal open to get to the wires connecting it to the network, I could probably hack there system."

"Wouldn't they have computers in the back office that you could get at more readily? I mean they have to manage their systems somewhere with more than just a 2x4 little green screen."

Jason blinked and then frowned. She was right. Sophia used to tell him he was so smart that he was dumb sometimes, and she was right. "Pfft, yeah, if you wanna do things the easy way." He muttered in a condescending tone, trying his best to make it look like he'd already thought of that and just chose not to.

"Easy way please. I mean if you really want this open, I can smash it. Otherwise, I'm not much use on that front." Lixi pointed at the register with the spiked short bat and smiled. "Or I can just help you carry this stuff to the office, and then take the keys when you're in."

Jason nit picked a bit as she picked up the various things he asked her to, fussing over the delicacy of the un-soldered rig up he'd had to make do with, but between the two they managed to carry it all back. He went to work ripping apart and slightly newer computer at a desk in what was labeled as the head managers office, while Lixi took the keys and headed back for her gun case.

She was on her way back when she heard crashing coming from elsewhere in the back, and went to investigate. Her mood lightened a little as she watched martin wreck into pallet after pallet, giddy as a kid at Christmas. The open, scavenged box of fireworks explained the mood. She watched for a few moments in silence before stepping further into the widened isle of this part of the back storeroom and cleared her throat. "Having fun?"

"Oh man, you've got no idea," he said looking excitedly at the array of explosives he'd laid out before him. He was imagining all the things he could do with his new toys. He held up a smoke bomb at eye-level, which because he was hunched over was also eye-level for Lixi. "If we need to get out of somewhere fast without bein' seen, we got these." In his head, he imagined them all as ninjas: escaping into the night under the cover of smoke. "And these," he indicated the bottle rockets, "if we run into something else like that tar thing." His mind was racing with the possibilities. Guns were awesome, and there was a certain satisfaction that came from wailing on something with a two-by-four, but he was a sucker for a big show. The way he saw it, the more distracted by the pretty lights that the enemy was, the less likely they were to expect a swift kick to the groin. "Ha! I'm a GENIUS!"



At the mention of food, real food, Adja's stomach began to growl. But she felt sick after that reading, and didn't know if she could stomach anything for long. Now she knew that she couldn't trust anyone until they showed their true colors, and the very idea that the fate of the world was held in the hands of people that she couldn't trust was nauseating. She was beginning to regret ever leaving her house. She tried detaching herself again, to make it easier to face them without showing outward signs of accusation. For the most part, it worked, but it made navigation hard. It also didn't help that she was starving. For now, she stuck with drinking water until she felt up to facing reality so she could eat. Tired, hungry, and not completely all there, she made her way to the McBurger attached to the store.

Lixi laughed for a moment and slipped an arm around Martin's waist, distracting herself from the chip on her shoulder she'd been reminded of a few moments before. "I think you're right. Granted, we should avoid using them until we really need them, low profile and all, but these could definitely come in handy." The idea of using mini fireworks was amusing, and could be useful, but mostly she just didn't want to bring down his high spirits. She smiled and kissed his cheek again, liking the way it made him blush every time she did. "Did you hear me asking about the food? What do you say we gather all this up, then grab a cart and haul a whole buffets forth of food up front to try and cook it in a fast food joint?"

"Keep you clothes on I'm coming in the room!" Jason called from down the dark industrial corridor of ceiling high shelves that separated the office from main warehouse area. Lixi rolled her eyes at the snarky tone in his voice. "Computers set up, and I'll get the info we need in a minute, I just really need something in my stomach. Lix do you even need to eat? Aren't you eternal or something?"

"It's Lixi. Not Lix. And no. I'll die some day just like everyone else. It just takes longer. I still get hungry, it just won't kill me AS FAST as it does you. If you cut my heart out, or cut off my head, or chop me in half, I'll die, I just heal fast enough that most things that'd do a human in will be gone. Shot to the chest will put me on my ass for a few weeks, at least, but I'll bounce back. Etc Etc Etc. So, yes, Jason, I need to eat. Preferably red meat. Tenders of the creatures and what not. More so, I just enjoy it." She grabbed a bag of chips from a near by pallet that the folks unloading the truck must not have gotten to sorting before the attacks got out of hand and threw it at Jason. "Weren't you whining about not having anything important to do earlier? Well, now you have something to do. Tell me what you're hungry for and go do what you do so well please. I promise I'll walky you when the foods done."

"Geez. Defensive much?" Jason huffed and walked back toward the office. "Just because Sophia's gone doesn't mean you're my boss instead." Realizing he rather sounded like a child, he left the rest of the rant unspoken and disappeared down the hall.

Martin glossed over the 'put your clothes on' comment in favor of trying to keep his cool in front of the lady, who had shown time and time again that she didn't need anyone to defend her honor. She seemed to do that all on her own. But when it came to calling her 'the boss' and walking off in a huff, he'd seen that happen before at work and it never ended well.

Of course, he was never too good at responding to that sort of thing in a healthy manner. He let go of Lixi after giving her one last comforting squeeze, and followed Jason on his way into the office. "Look, kid," he said not bothering to keep his tone down. His hands flew up when he was angry, and right now he was gesticulating madly out of habit. "I know you're super upset about your chick leaving you and all, but you're gonna have to get the fuck over it. Okay, I get it. Its only been a few hours since she left you, but take it out on her, don't take it out on me. And for fuck's sake don't take it out on Lixi." He grabbed him by the shirt to keep him from running away, which it seemed he was prone to doing. Nearly ten years of being pushed around by HIS boss and HIS colleagues and putting up with it because it was for the good of the business was manifesting itself in one outburst. He knew what it was like to be the bottom rung on a team, but he would be damned if he would see this whelp get self-righteous at a time like this.

"She's the closest thing we got to a lead on how to save the UNIVERSE and you're actin' like you can afford to go it alone. Ain't you EVER seen a horror movie? The nerdy guy always dies when he leaves the group." He let go of his shirt and pushed him backwards in the process. "So what you're doin' here, with the attitude an' everything, ain't exactly workin' with my idea of a survival team. So get. Over. Your-damn-self. "

Vulture sat in the back of his head, watching the outburst, rather in awe. She wondered if it was due, in part, by her feeding his ego now and then. She did it so that when it came time for her to surface, the influence she'd had was big enough to ensure that their personalities were less incompatible, and the distant hope that he'd managed a higher standing by that time. So far, he had been so resistant. But this confrontation was so different from his usual behavior that she was now beginning to understand why it was so hard for her to retain control of this body.

Oh my. That was... efficacious.
Shut up. I'm awesome.

Lixi had fallowed the few paces quietly, and thought about interceding when Martin grabbed Jason, but watched quietly instead when Martin made no further aggressive actions. The bout of anger was unexpected. Look who decided to put on the 'daddy pants' all of a sudden. She chuckled internally and half smirked as she thought of how appropriate that line fit, what with Martin putting Jason's juvenile attitude in check.

"Whoa whoa whoa! Hey man! Take it easy. Jeez dude, no need to get all psycho on me. Fuck! I didn't mean anything by it. We're all stressed here. Excuuuuse MEE for expressing it." Jason stormed off down the hall like a pissed off teenager.

Lixi watched him for a moment, the crept silently up behind Martin and slid both arms around his waist gently. "Let him go dear." She said quietly as she lay her head against his back since she wasn't tall enough to rest her head on his shoulders from back here. "So, how about that feast? All this carnage and blood has made me quite hungry."

Martin almost followed after him, just about ready to use his fists instead of his words. He probably would have said something to the effect of 'express it by killing some zombies,' but Lixi distracted him. The hands he was about to put into fists curled into claws, pushed against an invisible wall stopping him from following, and he exhaled. He brought a hand up to one of his thick eyebrows and tried to suppress his aggravation. "This is why I don't have kids," he said. Among other reasons, of course, but his strong desire not to raise a brat was good enough of one.

Feast! Dude. I'm starving. He let his anger fizzle out into nothing at the thought of finally having a good meal. "Y'know... when you say stuff like that," he said in response to the comment about carnage, "I start doubtin' where you stand on this whole humanity thing." He pulled her around to his side and grinned. "S'kinda hot."

You wouldn't think so if you knew why... Lixi smiled and pulled him silently by the hand back towards the grocery end of the warehouse style back room. "Now'd be the time to place your orders folks. Grabbing a cart and loading it up in a few. Adja? Jason?" As they pushed through the heavy double doors and emerged into the brightly lit dairy section, she spied a loose floating metal shopping cart, with some warm mild and a few other miscellaneous items in it. Dumping it's contents on the floor, she headed down the isle and started loading it up, mentally locking away anything request of her by the voices on the walky.

She'd have Martin push the cart from time to time, and tried her best to play jovially as they stocked up on various things. By the time they got to the housewares section to grab the needed cooking implements, she realized she'd managed to let her appetite get the best of her, and had managed to totally fill the cart when all they were making was one meal for four people. Four very hungry people, but just four people none the less. She glanced at Martin, wondering if he'd processed the amount of food they were grabbing, but he didn't seem to be paying it any attention if he did. She grabbed a few various pots and pans, a cutlery set, and slid a big box with a very formal yet cheap looking dining set onto the bottom rack, then strained against the heavily laden cart to move it back in the direction they'd entered the store from.

"Hey can you head up front with this? I gotta run back to sporting goods real quick. I want my guns. Also I forgot the people foil things." She darted off before Martin could fully answer her, hand on the walky as she went. "We're almost done. Martin's heading back up front with the food, I gotta grab some guns and then I'll be up. Jason, you get what you were after yet?"

"Almost. I got the guys address again, even printed it out back here along with any info I could find that looked legit about local reports of that Thelama stuff you guys are on about. I'm into the city's system, which actually is where I got the authors listing and the info on the Thelema church. They're listed on the tax exempt records for a religious org. and he's got a police record a mile long for harassment, trespassing, etc. All I still have to do is fish around a bit till I find the records for the cities substructures and we should be set."

"Thank you Jason. Believe it or not I appreciate you getting that, and we are all glad you're here. If anyone is gonna have info on where Arminos took Sophia it'll be the Thelama group, or at least they'll be able to point us to someone who will know. I still wanna check out the author though. Call it a hunch. We'll meet you back up front when you get done Jason. I still gotta fill everyone in on what I learned behind the trailers before Martin came to rescue me."

She'd reached sporting goods at this point. A few quick twists let her wrench the cases open. She took her time and analyzed a few different weapons, and finally settled on modern looking, fairly lightweight, black 12 gauge shot gun, and two hefty 44 caliber hand guns. She filled the little leather pouch on her tool belt with shells for the shot gun, and the ammo holders on the gun vest with .44 rounds, then grabbed a few boxes of each to carry along for good measure. After all, if her old crew had upgraded to military weapons, maybe it was time she learned to accept them too. They did look kinda cool after all.

When Lixi said "feast," Martin took it literally. As his height and weight would indicate, he had a monster metabolism and could easily eat an entire bison and still have room for more, but so far his diet had consisted of potato chips and Little Debbie snack cakes out of laziness and no desire to actually prepare food. Ergo, the prospect of real food with actual nutrients sounded like the greatest thing since... well... sliced bread. As such, he was more than happy to fill the cart with food and believed that at one point he managed to accrue about six pounds of precooked sausage from just pulling things off the shelves.

It took Adja forever to respond. She was hungry, there was no doubt, but she still felt nauseous. It wasn't just the vision that made her sick: it was the dead bodies everywhere, being outside for the first time in years, and being unsure of her ability to survive. All those things compiled with the precognition that someone in their group would heel-face-turn and doom them all, yes. She was having trouble keeping her appetite. The water was helping, but not by much. She thought it best to at least pretend that there was nothing wrong when Martin reinforced Lixi's question with "Hey, sis. Whaddya want?"

"Chicken," she said, assuming that white meat would be easier for her to keep down.

"Got it, sis! A whole chicken just for you!"

Lixi peeled off, leaving him with the heavy cart. It was more than a chore to get it to the storefront, and he may have regretted the Tub-O-Pudding he'd decided on a whim to nick. He figured he could eat a whole tub. Though the cart was heavy, he did greatly approve of Lixi's quest to acquire guns. Not as cool as fireworks, but not everyone is about the flash-boom-boom.

With a final strained push, he was into the pitiful excuse for a restaurant area. He gave Adja a nod and gestured proudly at the haul. "See, this is what I call a meal." It was then that he noticed the stress that she wore on her face. The circles under her eyes, which had always been present, were so dark that they gave her face a hollowed-out feel. "What's wrong? Is this about that... scrying stuff?"

Adja nodded. "It just doesn't look as hopeful as I would have thought," she said cryptically. She wondered if she could read his aura deeply enough to see if he was the one that would betray them, but she was too weak to keep it up. She didn't even know if auras worked that way.

"Well. Then. That just means we enjoy this feast while we got it. You said chicken, right? We got all kinds uh chicken! Legs, quarters, wings, you name it: we cut a piece of it off a bird for ya." Oddly hyper for someone whose only nutrients in the past twenty four hours was a half a bottle of Jack, and who had been unconscious for an unhealthy amount of time, he began pulling out pieces of chicken to get ready to fry on the disgusting grill, figuring that it didn't matter what he was cooking: it would get eaten.

Wandering back into earshot just in time to hear Adja's worried comment, Lixi pondered the ramifications of telling them about her brother. She decided it would be best to just fess up rather than asking them to take anything else on blind faith that she was just hopefully telling them the truth, after all, she wasn't actually one of the angels anymore, and the trust in blind faith was kinda their deal.

An old Elvis Presley song stuck in Lixi's head for little to know reason, and despite the lack of relevance, or even any semblance of appropriateness, she walked through the door singing it.

Maybe I didn`t treat you. Quite as good as I should have. Maybe I didn't love you. Quite as often as I could have. Little Things I should have said and done. I just never took the time. You were always on my mind. You were always, on my mind.

She flopped gingerly down in the hard plastic bench of one of the booths, letting the box of thermal blankets plop onto the table beside her. Her guns and clubs clunked and rattled as they hit. Hmm... utilitarian is noisy. Wonder if there's a way to streamline this. She contemplated it for a moment before looking up at the siblings. "Well, when you've spent as long with the odds completely and totally stacked against as I have, you eventually give up on thinking about it, and just focus on being so paranoid you survive." She unhooked the gun harness in the center and let them gently down onto her seat, but kept the tool belt in place, then hopped up and headed to the shopping cart to begin helping Martin with the food. "Would you wait and throw my steak on last? I like it just barely warmed and brown on the outside. The juicier the better." Into the walky she yelled, "Jason, lets go, foods cooking."

"Alright alright! God you're demanding. I'm already packing stuff up. Be there in a second." He'd already stuffed the altered components of the lap top he'd assembled inside it and fastened the protective shell back over them, and was currently working on craming it and the external hard drive he'd made to salvage his destroyed laptops guts into a heavy duty, supposedly water proof shoulder bag he'd found in the computer accessories section.

"Hey, you were the one who said I was being bossy. If you already think I'm being that way, then I may as well live up to your expectations." Lixi laughed for a second and rolled her eyes, knowing the kid didn't take this as lightly as she did. "just remember, we're about to go trecking through sewers. Miles of subterranean tunnels filled with human shit. Travel as lightly as you can stand to, and leave room for weapons. Gun case is still unlocked if you want something more or just need ammo for yours. There's also a nice selection of things you could use in this store. I highly suggest picking something functional up."

There was no answer from Jason on the walky after that. He simply showed up about 15 minutes later, just as the food was getting close to done, and sat down with a perturbed huff. He'd brought a big black bag and big old Rambo knife from what Lixi could see. Not the most effective, but she wasn't about to argue with him at this point. The group continued in silence for a while longer, till finally the food was prepared and lined up in a giant, unorganized, smorgasbord of a buffet on the front counter of the burger joint. Lixi watched as everyone got there plates heaped full, then did the same herself and joined them at one of the larger tables.

"Well, then, down to business I suppose. I don't wanna bog everything down with details, so I'll just give the short version, and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer." She took a long, savored bite of the steak, reveling in it's texture and the feel of the cool, juicy center. "My brother, who before a few hours ago, I hadn't seen since I left heaven, is part of the clean up crew. I saw him when I was behind the trailers. He's the one who cleaned this place out and told me it was safe, he also agreed to report this place was empty and he killed us to keep the helicopter from doing another thermal sweep of this area any time soon. He said we need to stay off the streets, they're ordered to kill anything warmer than room temp, hence why I grabbed the thermal blankets. We need to move quickly and stay out of the open. Apparently they're supposed to try to eliminate Joel, then they're leveling the whole place. Bright side of life..." She sighed as she thought about the ramifications the were entailed should her next statement come to fruition. "...They probably aren't going to succeed, which should leave us a window of opportunity to get the fuck outta Dodge if we do manage to stop this ourselves." She left out the fallowing thoughts on if she had a chance at saving her brother, and how she could do it, finally ending in a certainty that she couldn't, and even if she could, he wouldn't let her.

Martin was enjoying his new role as cook, not really knowing much about how to cook food other than to keep it from being red in the middle, with the exception of Lixi's direct order to keep her's fairly fresh. He grinned at that statement, finding this development of slight bloodlust just a bit arousing. Personally, he preferred his at medium, but there was something about a woman with a vicious nature that really got him going. He assumed it was the same reason he liked redheads.

"Okay, so we're going to be traveling through the sewers to break into the house of a man who may-or-may-not hold the secret location to a Thelemist Temple, in hopes that we can use their arcane knowledge to find where Arminos took Sophia. How exactly is that helping us stop Joel from summoning what we assume to be an Elder?" Adja wasn't shy about her feelings towards Sophia. From her one, short meeting with her, she had deduced that aside from being another otherworldly being and having a severe case of memory loss, there was not that much special about her. Aside from being another alliance, she seemed to be of no use to them and thus far was only creating trouble. And with the vision she had just had, she didn't want to have any other people in this equation.

"She's my girlfriend!" Jason yelled, face immediately turning a shade of puce rivaling Martin's uncooked chicken. "Don't you think that she's important to me?"

"Oh, is that what your shitty attitude is about?" Martin called out from the grill, over the sound of sizzling meat. "Got bigger fish to fry, Patches. Love ain't that important."

"NOT THAT IMPORTANT?! Since you two met," he pointed at Martin and Lixi accusingly. "Its been nothing but googly eyes and kissy-faces from you two and you haven't known each other for twenty-four hours yet. You met yesterday. So don't fucking tell me that she's not important for the same reason this jackass is important." He was fuming, clearly speaking what had been on his mind since she'd disappeared.

Martin quirked a bushy eyebrow, not so much angry as slightly perturbed at Jason's accusation of kissy-faces and googly-eyes. "Kid, you're ALL messed up. Smoke a fucking joint or something if it will get you to chill the fuck out.."

Still fuming and clearly not done ranting, but conceding to the fact that perhaps he did need to take a chill pill, he sat back down in the booth, grinding his teeth. Letting his anger simmer had been working for him so far. Maybe it was best that he keep his mouth shut. Being passive-aggressive was something that he was good at.

Taking the outburst in to account, Adja assumed that perhaps she should have been a bit less crass about her approach. "Uhh... come to think of it, I think, yes... there was a prophecy," she said, lying through her teeth and trying very hard to sound 'mystic.' "Yes, she may be the key to our success. I don't know why I didn't realize it before..."

"Really?"

"Yes. Really," she said flatly, glad only to be moving on. "Anyway, did you say that your brother was part of the cleanup crew? Are you sure we can trust his word that he won't out us?" She was slowly compiling information so that she could see who this betrayer would be. If the person they were putting their trust in was working for one of their enemies, then it was hard not to jump to the obvious conclusion

Lixi eyed Adja tentatively. Unsure what she meant by Sophia being a key element. After having thought about for a long moment she turned her attention to the question about her brother. It had never even crossed her mind that Miah would turn on her. "Honestly, I don't know. Knowing how things used to be up there though, he'd be flogged on the spot if he were to report back to them that he'd found us and didn't kill you and drag me back for destruction publicly at the hand of the house, so it seems a fair better chance that he wouldn't say anything about us."

She turned her attention back to Martin and Jason in there little spat. "Jason, please calm down. We can't turn against each other like this. You'll see Sophia soon. She's a tough girl, and we'll make sure that you find her. Martin, I know you're trying to keep order dear, and I'm very grateful, but do try to see his side too. You came running to check on me when I'd disappeared around a building, and like Jason said, you've only known me for a day. Jason's girlfriend was taken right off the back porch and we haven't seen her all day. I think he's worry is understandable even if it is a little over zealous." Having finished her steak, she finally let herself dig into some of the rest of the feast.

Jason skulked at her over the table, eating his own meal silently and with little fervor. Quietly he fished a folder out of the bag he'd been carrying and slammed it down in the middle of the table. "There. There's your damn information."

Lixi reached forward and flipped through the packet. Two addresses, with an aerial map of there location and printed street direction were on top. One was the writers, nestled deep within a seedy, well populated part of town. The other appeared to be in amongst the warehouses down by the docks.

"What's this one?" Lixi asked, pointing to it's spot on the map.

"It's your church, or at least so says their tax records." Jason responded in an obnoxious manor, still chewing his food as he spoke.

"Really? There? That doesn't seem very much like the Thelema Church I remember. They usually prefer decedent opulence. Not rusting rottenness."

"That's what the fucking form said. I checked it over and over. Ever form listing their group is naming that as their building, and that's who the warehouse is leased to. why the hell would I make this shit up?"

She raised an eyebrow at his denial of lying when he hadn't been accused of any such thing. "Well then, this does pose us with an interesting couple of options." She flipped back to glance at the sewer schematics as she spoke. Their was a major access to them right in the warehouse district, and it was, unfortunately, one of the closest ones. If they planned on using those to get to the Author, checking the warehouse first may be feasible, but to Lixi, it just didn't feel right. "This warehouse puts us right near a sewer access. Should we check it out first?"

After a long silence, she realized she hadn't answered Adja's other question. "Oh, and getting back to what you'd asked Adja, The Thelemans are the living reincarnation of a very ancient demonic cult that's original purpose was to summon the old ones. Joel originally went to them, and the old crone who led them, when he first started down the road he's on now. If we find the church, we can probably make contact with someone who should know at least a little about both Joel's current exploits, and about where Arminos took Sophia."

Martin considered talking back in his defense, but thought how cool would of me would it be if I apologized? Hell yeah, I'll be the mature one. "You're right, Lixi," he said, turning to Jason "I'm sorry, aight? I'll try to be more... uh... considerate." All the food was done except for Lixi's steak, which would take a minute or two.

Adja had not meant to spark any kind of interest in Sophia being a key component to the plan. It had only been a way to get Jason to calm down and stop yelling. She was getting a headache. But as long as it kept him in check she might as well try to keep up the façade. Though, his attitude wasn't improving much. "I see. So the Thelemists and Joel are connected," she said, getting back to the matter at hand. These Thelemists sounded shady if they were performing their rituals in a warehouse, but other than them they had no leads aside from the Author, who sounded like a conspiracy nut with more loose screws than the Thelemists combined. Warehouse first.

"I think we should go to the warehouse first, but we'll need to be careful." She shot a glance at Martin. "None of us know what we're dealing with here."

"FOODS UP!"

Lixi nodded at Adja, and shot Martin an appreciative smile, then stood to get her steak. After resuming her place at the table she began analyzing the larger aerial sky view map, trying to pinpoint where exactly they were, and the best way to get to the docks from there. Getting to the river seemed easiest, as they could hit it less than a mile from where they were. It would be fairly easy to fallow along drainage ditches and low brush till then, but having to fallow the river and eventually cross it would be harder. Most of it was surrounded by tall cement walls as a flooding precaution, and crossing would leave them horribly exposed no matter how it was done.

"We may have to get wet..." she accidentally mumbled out loud.

"Sweet! I'mma go snag some boots," Martin declared, taking a large bite out of a precooked sausage. "What's everyone's shoe size?"

Adja looked over at the map, very carefully picking at her chicken. She had decided that she was hungry and that to survive she would have to eat eventually. "Is that really our best option?" She only very barely knew how to swim and as far as she knew, Martin didn't so much swim as he did float. She couldn't speak for Jason, but he didn't seem the type to be much of a swimmer. Overlooking the map and the flood wall, she put her mouth to the reciever of the walky. "Pick up some rope while you're at it."

"You got it!"

She took the walky away from her mouth, still not convinced that it was clean, even though she'd wiped it so much that a coating of the plastic could have come off. "If we're going to be crossing the river, we need to be prepared. There's a powerful undercurrent."

"Not the whole way. I think, that maybe, if we can unhook one of the empty boats from where we'll first hit the river up here," She pointed to a spot on the map where the river was closest to them, "preferably a tug for the garbage barges. I know I've seen them docked near there before, you three should be able to batten down under a layer or two of the thermal blankets and be undetectable by the heat scans. I'm room temperature at best half the time, so if I sit real still in the cabin and try to slowly steer us while letting it look more like an accidental floating, I should be able to run us aground somewhere close to the warehouse district. We may still have to get a little wet and float down along the wall till we get to a safe place to get out though if I either can't steer it in close enough or if it looks like they're crawling around there and we need a stealthy evac."

She smirked silently, contemplating how her night had begun floating above that area of the river, only to plummet toward it just a few short days ago. "Yeah... the currents bad in the river, and above it. The air flow is directed in a vicious pattern by the lay out of the city. Whips you all to hell if you're up in it. My biggest issue is how bad the river stinks here. It's so polluted and grimy. Believe me, I'll do everything I can to keep us from getting in it. Only time I ever willingly dove into it was a few days ago, but I had a death wish, and drowning seemed as good a shot at it as any."

She turned sideways in the booth and put her feet up on the bench. Discarding the napkin she'd just wiped her hands off with, she rested her head against the wall behind her as she dug out her notebook and began flipping through for the name of the last priest of Thelema that she'd known. It had been about 40 years, but hopefully they'd at least still know his name and take it as a sign they could talk to Lixi and her rag tag group.