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Min lowered her head and lightly nudged Rasputin, gesturing for him to follow her. Traversing through the metallic kitchen, everything seemed so clean and immaculate. She didn't like it. Everything seemed so prepared, so easy, so... unnaturally set up. She didn't like it. But she didn't say this out loud, for she knew Graer would only shoot her down and tell them to keep moving. It was one thing to sit safely on a perch and relay orders; another thing entirely to be the one actually carrying them out.

After turning a slight corner, they caught sight of Bandit, and Min clicked her jaws softly to let her know they were approaching from behind her. The two raptors and sabertooth tiger hunched low beneath the window on the kitchen door, so that no one passing by may see them.

Min held her breath as she heard someone walk past, her muscles tightening, ready to pounce at any moment.

"No matter WHERE you are, it's gonna be pretty d*mn hard to hide yourselves and hope not to be seen. There are cameras throughout each floor, and without access to the security mainframe, I can't tell you what they see. All I know is that the basement is out the kitchen, down the hall, sharp turn left, and the second door to your right. It's large, metal, and labeled BASEMENT, so unless you're incredibly daft, you can't miss it. There are also armed guards patrolling the corridors. We don't know which of them are androids, so wait for them to pass before you make a run for it. Keep an eye on the cameras to know when to go."

Min let out her breath and peeked out the door. "Alright, flyboy," she hissed. "Where are these cameras we should watch out for?"

Graer sighed into his headset, making sure to portray his disdain at Bandit's decision to split up the group. "Ceiling corners, all of them. All I can tell you is that they're automatic. If someone comes into their view, it takes a scan of their face and runs it through a database. If no matches are found, it sounds an alarm."

Min searched and eventually found a camera swaying to and fro in a corner down the hall where the basement was. After quickly checking the premiss, she clicked her jaws at Bandit. "You're the leader, so you go first. Do you want us to follow or wait here?"

Ooc:// This post is going to be kinda extra short because I have absolutely tons of homework and I'm not even supposed to be on the computer right now O.o

Rasputin was grateful that Min caught him at the perfectly right time. The last thing he wanted to do was ask Graer, since he had sort-of a reputation for being bossy. He would only shoot him down and tell him to just go. It was one thing to sit back and watch, but another to actually be doing it.

He followed Bandit and Min closely, out of fear that he would lose his track. No, not fear, for Rasputin didn't even know the meaning of fear. He never felt it, not even with the humans. He knew he out-performed the humans in every way, shape or form, (maybe not in intelligence) but in strength, skill, and street smarts mostly. Rasputin was starting to warm up to the idea of having a team, even though he still thought it was a bad idea.

Completing the mission was the only thing Rasputin was made for... or, reincarnated for. He still had more than a mere shred of dignity, and the humans couldn't take away his own free will nor did they break his spirit. He never valued a life, nor understood how important a single life can be. He didn't care about what happened to anyone. Well, I shouldn't say that. He didn't care about what happened to human beings. He didn't value life.

But he had to complete the mission at all costs, and his own life was no exception.

Sorry this is so late! But, it was delayed for a good reason - Sourcecast. Check it out in the Other section, it's stickied.

Bandit growled quietly, hearing the condescending tone from the the proto-bird and rolled her eyes. She glanced over at Min and whispered, "Wait for my signal." With a sharp glance over her shoulder toward the door, she saw the camera on the other side of the glass window towards the top turn away. It was small, and it would probably remain pointed down the hall for roughly 30 seconds. If they timed to right, they could be underneath it before it turned back on the kitchen on its next rotation. She leaned up a bit more and peered through the same window, down the hall. A figure was about to round the left turn Graer had mentioned. With any luck, no one else would be in the vicinity. She ducked down as the camera began to turn back toward the kitchen.

"Get ready to move to the door to the hallway. Stay low, under the line of the window." She waited, judging the time carefully, then glanced quickly to see the camera start to turn. "Now."

The velociraptor stood and bolted to the door, again glancing through the window as she went. Another camera halfway down the hall was turning toward them. 'D***,' she swore in her head. They'd have to wait to go through the door, and it would be risky. And the camera at the far end of the hall was turning away toward the corner, meaning they would have to make a similar maneuver to get past it. The other cameras down the hall might have been on the same timeline, but she wouldn't count on it in this overly secure place.

"Wait here for a bit," she said as she reached the door, keeping her head low, and counting down. Again, once the time elapsed, the camera started to turn and she said, "Now," throwing the door open and moving underneath the first camera/ Though the last camera was angled to where it appeared it might catch them, if they stayed just under that first camera, they'd be just out of it's angle of vision. Again their luck held and no other creatures came into the hall. She went through the same routine, getting to under each of the cameras where they wouldn't be seen until they got to the end of the hall and the sharp left turn. She peered around the corner and stiffened instantly when she saw three figures patrolling the long corridor. They appeared human, but of course, there was no way she could tell just by looking at the moment, and she was too pre-occupied to try and smell them at the moment.

"Bogeys, right around the corner," she hissed. One was coming their way. She waited until he was just around before the corner, then reached and grabbed him by the shirt. In another swift movement, she'd wrapped her tail around his head and yanked only with enough force to break the human neck. It gave more resistance than normal, but twisted finally with an almost noiseless clunk. That answered one question. She glanced around the corner to see the other two guards keeping to their path, much farther down than they'd been before, then quietly placed the android on the floor out of view of the other cameras. Nodding to the others, she lead the way equally as quiet to the door labeled "Basement". With another swipe of the access card, the door slid into the side of the wall and they were in.

Again, the velociraptor lead the way down the stairs, the basement door sliding closed as soon as they'd all entered. Her eyes adjusted well to the darkness, and within a few moments, she was finishing her flight down the stairs to the access panel. Of course, a code would normally be required to open it, but she wondered if the access card would work here as well. She scanned it, and with luck, again it opened. It was almost enough to make her suspicious that things were going so well.

"Alright, we're here. What do we do with this?"

Min began to click her jaws again. She didn't know why her breath had begun to go faster as they finally slipped through the doors of the basement. Perhaps she shared in the common feeling of the group that things were going much too smoothly. She signaled to Bandit that she'd keep watch over the door, lest anyone come wandering in.

Graer ruffled his feathers, trying to stifle the sound of his surprise through his headset. "You're there? Already? Like... in the basement?" Suddenly remembering that he had their positions monitored, he pulled up their locations and verified this for himself. He grunted. "Huh. So you are. Well then, this next step is very crucial, so listen and do exactly as I say."

Graer pulled up the specs of the mansion's known security systems that he'd recently downloaded from HQ. They weren't exactly detailed, which meant he had to go off his head on how the hardware might be circuited.

"Somewhere around, you should see some servers. They're big and blocky, and covered in a lot of blinking lights. These control the stream of information to a dominant mainframe, which then carries out the necessary actions, like locking down the complex, releasing the automatons, and sounding the alarm... not that you freaks understand any of this, I'm just saying it so you all know how important it is that you don't mess this up.

The dominant mainframe looks exactly like a regular server, only it should be more guarded; bullet-proof glass and padlocks... nothing you can't handle... hopefully. You need to destroy it. Now here's a small setback; people will be sure to notice when the mainframe goes down -- expect company. Lots of it. Everyone is sure to be alerted, but since the mainframe is down, Ivanov won't be able to initiate a lockdown.

Whoever comes to greet you and however many there are, you need to hold them off long enough for me to override the system... pretty much replacing the dominant mainframe with a software-based ******* (1) server of my own genius creation, so all that information streams to my headset instead. Since I'm doing this all wirelessly, this might take some time, though; fifteen to twenty minutes at most. After that, I'll have control over most of the automated processes throughout the complex. We'll be able to locate Ivanov faster without having to run around so much and risk him escaping by some other means."

Graer ruffled his feathers, feeling quite proud of himself. "Get cracking, freaks." (2)

(1) For some reason, the forums asterisks-out the word "P-R-O-X-Y."
(2) I want to establish right now that I'm not even sure this sort of thing is possible. At least not with modern technology, setups are usually much more advanced and would probably take much more elite hacking skills to infiltrate.

Rasputin followed Min and Bandit, slinking through the door labeled 'Basement'. He had his head turned in a position that one makes when taking a backward glance, as to assure that no enemies were following. This mission seemed so easy. Not that he would know any comparison.

He was still walking on his heels, attempting to be as quiet as possible; for this was the most crucial- and fatal- part of the mission. Since his head was turned, he didn't look where he was going and crashed right into a bookcase. There were no books in it, but it has various trophies and pots and pans. Rasputin knew his size may prove an obstacle in the assignment, and now his hypothesis was correct. A stainless steel pot fell from the second-to-top shelf, which Rasputin miraculously caught in his mouth. He took his paw and wiped his forehead. Phew!

However, when he tried to gingerly place the pot on the ground, his fangs had seemed to have cut right through the steel and were stuck. Rasputin tried to shake his head slightly to ease it off, but he couldn't get it off and still have it in one piece. He obviously couldn't walk around with a pot in his mouth, so he took one of his claws and cut the pot right in half. One half rolled onto the floor, and one half he laid on the ground, since he had it in his paw. He pushed the two halves to the side, so no guards would see it or trip over it.

By then, he had lost sight of Min and Bandit, and he was locked in advance darkness. It was a handy thing to have night vision, as all cats do, for situations like these.

Maybe not this exact situation, but...

Now was not the time for thinking. Now was the time for finding his team and doing everything right. If he made one more mistake, the entire mission could be in jeopardy. Yeah, no pressure or anything.

Ooc: It's cool, Suka. It may or may not be close to truth, but I won't worry about that for right now. Besides, it's all supposed to be futuristic anyway (admittedly, I lagged on that with the cameras, but nothing especially creative was coming to mind right then) so feel free to embellish on details.

The velociraptor quickly found what the archeopteryx was talking about. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean that she was happy about it. Indeed, there was one server that was separated from the rest and protected. Multiple red laser beams pointed in several different places at the server, moving in random patterns of motion. These wouldn't have been too much of a problem if the server wasn't also covered in a thin, almost transparent layer of tenadium. They certainly did want it protected and for good reason. "So much for our luck," she grumbled, watching the lasers for a few moments. She found out quickly enough that, though the pattern was randomized, it still had to follow some sort of pre-determined path based on timing and location. These would have to be generated by some sort of formula, and it was only a matter of watching and waiting to figure that out. A minute or two ticked by without her moving so much as a centimeter.

Finally, she grinned and lowered herself down into a ramming position, angling her shoulder at the server and scrunching up her body as tightly as she could. The lasers moved far enough apart several seconds after so that they were each examining the space around the server for just a moment, and she slammed herself into it, knocking it back just enough so that it was out of the way. She made quick work of tearing at it, not caring that the instant the lasers moved back before she was done, the alarm would go out to the guards. They would come anyway once the server was trashed. But the extra few seconds would give them a little more time. A few sparks flashed from some of the wires as she tore them, but they soon faded and the lights on the panel went out.

Again she grinned savagely and stepped out from the crouched position. Of course, by this time, the lasers had shut off, indicating what had happened. "Do your thing, Graer. Min, get ready, we're about to have this place flooded. Hide in the shadows if you can. Even with visual aid gear, we're still better in the dark than they are, so let's not lose any advantage we have."

She glanced up at the bookshelf Rasputin had knocked into earlier and then revised her statement. "On second thought, think you can get up there and attack from above? Rasputin, I need you behind that door. Don't move until all of them are inside. I'll draw them in as best as I can." She moved towards the center of the room and took a few steps back, toward the wall behind her. Better to have something she knew wasn't going to move behind her.

Probably 6 personnel units will come to investigate the disturbance at first, with only two initially coming in to examine the damage and the rest following after shouts from the others upon seeing Bandit. None will be androids, but they will be a mix of humans and robots.

Min swerved her head off to the side, her slitted eyelids contracting to the dim light. Outside the door, she could hear people talking in urgent voices. Quickly turning back to Bandit, she nodded her head and slinked back into the shadows, waiting to pounce.

"Magey cat," Graer squawked into his headset, causing all the other members to wince. "Get that fat tail of yours into gear and quit loping around!!" He'd have said more crude things, but the sound of metal being ripped apart interrupted him. Even from his perch, Graer could sense the ferocity behind each swipe of those lethal claws, the monstrosity behind those gaping jaws that tore and tore and tore. Silently, Graer shuddered, glad that he hadn't been assigned any other job than the one he had.

"Do your thing, Graer..."

At last. Graer twisted himself and felt his spine crack into place. "Alright, freaks, prepare to tango." At his mental will, he called up the program and prepped up the large p.roxy for transfer. Now that the mainframe was down, all that information was pretty much leaking out into nowhere; in the fifteen to twenty minutes he might take overriding the system, Ivanov may have already escaped, but of course, he dared not disclose this little detail to the rest of the team. If all else fails, at least he'd have done his job and would be free of blame. Bandit's the leader. SHE should take the hit. Rasputin too.

The thought put an amused smirk on his face as he sent the program over to re-connect itself with the now-open data streamlines. A bar appeared before him that slowly began to fill up; 0%... 1%... 2%...... 3%...

Graer cursed loudly. Loud enough for all the dinosaurs to hear... and loud enough for a curious guard outside to turn his head. He pulled out a pair of binoculars and held them up to his face; Graer, of course, hadn't seen this, as he was too preoccupied watching the bar slowly climb in percentage.

Suddenly, the guard broke into a sprint as he reached one of the posts and shouted something in Russian to another guard. At their access, two automatons were released, programmed to home into Graer's heat signature...

IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!

Rasputin still looked for Min and Bandit in the pitch dark with only a slight neon glow that only he could see. Suddenly, a loud screeching cuss came through the communication device. He flattened his ears to shut it out, but he soon realized that it was too loud to be just himself hearing it. It echoed through the hall, bouncing off every smooth surface and finally fading away.

It was silent for about half a second. As soon the echo lost its momentum, a new sound filled Rasputin's eardrums. The loud 'BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!' was a familiar sound to the tiger. It was the noise that humans made when they walked. The footsteps got louder and louder as they approached, and Rasputin knew there was no place for an eight foot sabertooth tiger to hide. The bookshelf he crashed into earlier wasn't wide enough to cover him, so he knew he was in trouble. About seven men dressed in uniforms came running down the hall, and Rasputin turned tail and...

Ran straight into the wall.

"Why do I keep crashing into things today?!" Rasputin grumbled. He faced the men and shot out his claws and the metal shells. If he couldn't run, there was no turning back now. He snarled and two of the men took out hand guns. Rasputin had seen those before. They shot at Rasputin and he sprinted along the wall. He used his claws to grip the concrete of the floor and, as he pushed off, chunks of grit and broken layers of asphalt flung backwards at the men, slowing them down. The bullets shot at Rasputin rickoche'd off the walls, ceiling, and portraits hung on the walls. The other five men also took out their guns and joined in the shooting.

Rasputin was now running for his life. Even though he knew that the bullets couldn't hurt him so badly, since this was only a simulation, he was training for the real mission, and in the real thing, death was a plausible element.

The men were now shooting ahead of him, trying to catch him before he got away, but he was too fast for them. However, one shot was fired in front of his face, and it whirred right in front of his eyes. His eyes were even so fast, he could see what that bullet was made of. It was some kind of cork-looking material, but it definitely wasn't cork. Rasputin dashed underneath any shelves that happened to be in his way, and the precious souvenirs from around the world fell after the men accidently shot them, but were aiming for the sabertooth tiger under them. Rasputin suddenly hit a corner, and his instincts kicked in. He leapt at the shooters, knocking one of them down. He took one claw and slit its throat quickly and cleanly.

One down, six more to go.

He stayed where he was after he killed the one, and he swung out his back leg and tripped three others. One hit his head on a priceless suit of armour while falling and was killed on impact. The other two Rasputin slit their necks as well. The other three that were still standing seemed to be out of ammunition, so Rasputin lunged at one's neck and crushed it between his mighty jaws, sinking his fangs deep into the trachea. As the man with the crushed neck fell backward, the man behind him caught him, looked at his friend's throat, then screamed and dropped him. Rasputin's built-in helmet was brought back out, and right when it fit snugly on his head, he rammed the remaining two men's legs, breaking the knees, and they collapsed to the floor in a heap. One of them died quickly and painlessly from hitting the floor so hard, but the other was still crawling, trying to find a way to get help.

As the last living man crawled soldier-style, he met a pair of reddish-tan paws. As the man stared, he noticed that steely, metal claws were gradually coming out of the slits on the paws. The man dared to lift his head and look up, and he saw the gleaming eyes and razor-sharp fangs of Rasputin, the sabertooth tiger.

Rasputin slowly walked around to the side of the man. He placed a paw on the man's back, then dug his claws through the flesh and took hold of the man's spine. The man couldn't say anything and couldn't move. Rasputin smirked and, before he broke the spine like a toothpick, said plainly, "Good luck in h***."

OOC: I'm back from my holiday, so I'll just wait until its my turn to post again and take Min back off of Dr. Rex's hands ^^

Total Bump

As usual, Graer's weakness of forgetting his own surroundings while relaying parts of the mission to the others caught up with him. "Be on guard. Graer, what happened? What's gone wrong?"

"Forget it," he snapped. "You wouldn't understand if I told you."

If the mission were to be any easier than he originally thought it'd be, the connection would be faster. Unfortunately, it was about 3 minutes into the download only about 20% complete. At this rate, the entire reinforcements guard could be on the team. Not even Graer had expected their reaction time to be so quick.

"Graer, move! You've got company coming your way!"

He closed the windows on his headset down just in time to see two automatons coming his way. Startled at their close proximity, Graer squawked into his headset just as a hailstorm of bullets rained down on him. Instantly, the little Archeopteryx lept off his branch only seconds before it was shredded by downpour. Spreading his wings, he banked sharply in the air, flying straight in between the bots before they, too, banked and followed in hot pursuit.

Gaining altitude then dropping suddenly towards the ground, Graer quickly picked up speed, but was surprised once again at the bots' matching attributes. He swerved as more bullets were fired at him, causing him to miss Bandit's comment about going back for him. Though his communications with them were still open and the download was still running, he wasn't paying attention to either.

He couldn't hope to loose the bots with speed and agility, which probably left one other option. As Graer's situation began to register with him, he was able to get over the initial shock. Though he wasn't much of a fighter himself, that didn't leave him completely defenseless. Suddenly angling his wings, he braked sharply, instantly loosing a majority of his speed. As the automatons were passing him, he stretched out a Talon and latched onto the back of one. Now the automatons were circling around, having lost sight of Graer for a few moments.

Grear used them as best he could, biting down into the metal shell so that he could get to the hardware inside. Instead, he felt a toothache. Titanium-alloy'ed sons of b!tches, he thought just as the automaton rotated its sonar sensor around 360 degrees to look at Graer right in the face.

Graer attempted a tittering smile.

And then the automaton discharged a bolt of electricity that traveled up into Graer. Though it wasn't enough to short-out his equipment, he did find it painful enough to screech out and let go, falling limply to the ground below for a few moments before he regained consciousness and flapped madly to regain altitude.

[DOWNLOAD PROGRESS: 53%]

Rasputin was admiring his work with the guards he'd recently torn apart when a steely shower banged through the communication device. It sounded dangerously close to gunfire. No! Rasputin screamed in his mind. He couldn't live with himself if one of his teammates got killed because he wasn't quick enough.

Wait, what was he saying? A few minutes ago, Rasputin didn't give a s*** about everyone else, as long as the mission was completed. Alright, alright, the tiger hated humans, but he wasn't prepared for a reincarnated animal, like him, to be destroyed in vain. They've all been through enough already.

Rasputin threw himself out the door, searching for Graer, but at the same time carefully avoiding the cameras. But what did it matter. If they were being shot at, their presence was probably already known. He forgot about the cameras and darted straight for automatons shooting after Graer and circling around him like mad men. Surprised, Rasputin caught sight of the little bird-like creature, but he was carrying an automaton by the talon. Two others were aiming and firing at him, so Raputin took the liberty of sneaking up behind one, and swiftly swung his back legs around, crashing against the automaton's legs, tripping it. When it fell, the sabertooth tiger held it down with one mighty paw, and sliced its neck, deactivating it.

Ooc:// I'm not so sure how you deactivate an automaton, but I just made it seem like if you slit its throat, it cuts a fatal wire that runs from the feet to the head, shutting it down. If there's a given way to do it, someone please give me a news flash. XD

The other automaton then noticed Rasputin and began an open fire on him. Rasputin jumped back to avoid the bullets, then rocketed forward into the knees, snapping them the wrong way. The robot fell backwards, dying on impact when the ground rushed up to meet it. Rasputin chuckled evilly, knowing that he can't be beat.

Min snapped her jaw in annoyance that the mission wasn't going as planned, then nodded in Bandits direction, before running off in a burst of speed. She paid no heed to the cameras, she already would have been seen by now.

On her way out of the door, she was met by a guard. She let out a growl, this guard was simply wasting her precious time. Jumping to dodge his bullet, which she avoided by only a scaled width, she lashed her tail out at him. He made a sound that resembled 'unnff' and put his hand to his broken nose and eye that was rapidly swelling. His nose began to bleed, signifying he was human.

Min made quick work of him, slicing his throat open, although at one point she wondered why he was alone. With that she was off in a flash, looking for doors, passageways, somewhere where she'd find ivanov. She came to the end of the doorless passageway she was in, and looked left, then right. 'which way?' she wondered.

She growled as she remembered it wouldn't be best to ask Graer right now. She chose left. This passageway held plenty of doors, but it was most likely Ivanov would be in one of the more guarded ones. She ignored the little passageways, thinking of what she'd seen of the 3D map, or whatever it was, she'd seen of the mansion.

She found a guarded door at the end of the passageway, but could not smell people inside the room. She silently watched the three guards, one standing on either end, and one pacing between the other two, pondering on whether to attack them. It took her only a second to decide, and another to spring out at them.

Stupid idea.

She felt something searing her leg, and she pulled it out of the way. Frowning she experimentally put her hand in front of the area that had burned her leg, and pulled away quickly. Lasers. Invisible lasers. In this time the guards had barely moved, but now they calmly removed their guns and pointed them at her.

"Oh, great" She groaned, silently scolding herself for being careless. If those lasers were stronger she'd have been finished. Deciding she could put up with a few burns, she lunged at the closest guard. He was caught by surprise, and slipped over as she swept her tail over him. His head rammed into the wall, giving Min an idea.

Using a lot of force, she slammed him into the wall. He dropped to the floor, killed by the force. Suddenly she felt something hit her tail. She looked back and saw that a bullet has scraped it. Growling she lunged at the next guard, biting down on his arm with enough force to crush a humans arm. Feeling no satisfying cunch of bones, she did the same thing as with the human guard and whammed it into the wall. Deactivated.

The last guard's throat was slit by her claws, and finally they were all done for. But, of course, more would probably come. Breaking the feeble lockon the door, mi stepped into the room...

And groaned. Money. They were guarding money. Sighing, she zipped out of the room. She'd rather not take the chance of being outnumbered, she'd already nearly been killed enough times.

But it wasn't herself she was worried about.
It was the mission.