[h2]Alessa Heather: PRT Headquarters[/h2]
[i]Well, it certainly seems like Ira and Lyn are hitting it off well![/i] Alessa thought to herself, smiling at their interaction with one another. She certainly wanted Lyn to feel as welcome as possible, after all... the more friends they all made, the better. Though on that note, she'd not missed Tulpa's somewhat dismissive comment to Margrave earlier. As she'd said to the girl already, he meant well, and even if his attitude was a bit much, she hoped Elliot wouldn't just be dismissed as a terrible person in Tulpa's mind. That, and... well, she hoped he wouldn't discount his power either. It didn't live up to his bluster, true, but it was still useful in its own right! Tinkers hate him! And, well, he wasn't really liked by many other people... ahem.

But the moment passed, as Sonar confirmed that Decoy had the situation under control, only to call the Wards to him again, this time to deal with what sounded like a much more major security breach. A Community member! Those guys made up the majority of Denver's troubles, it seemed, and even Alessa had a hard time finding anything good to say about them. With one so close to the PRT headquarters, surely nothing good was about to happen unless they stopped it. Alessa stepped into the elevator with that in mind, and it began its descent toward their next fight. Amongst other things, she saw Dean checking his gear prior to entering the elevator, and Ira removing her mask to allow herself to breath easier... for a hero, she was perhaps a little out of shape, judging by her reaction to simply running a few feet. Her costume may have had something to do with that as well? Alessa didn't really want to judge too hard...

A gasp from Tulpa distracted Alessa from her musing, and she glanced over briefly, before re-averting her gaze toward the floor as a means of focusing herself for the fight rather than being distracted by her thought... then she frowned. It looked, for a moment, like some strangely-placed light had been on the floor, only to vanish from sight near-instantly. She blinked a few times, checking to see if it hadn't been a temporary glare imprint from glancing at one of the lights in the hall, then shook her head. She was sure it was nothing, maybe a trick of the light in the elevator itself... [i]And speaking of light, I ought to get myself disguised,[/i] Alessa pondered. Steadily, her eyes began to glow a bright white colour, not blindingly so, but enough that her entire face was obscured for the coming fight. There weren't exactly any other preparations to make - make sure she was disguised, make sure she could put up a heat shield at a moment's notice, and remember that her power had the potential to be excessively lethal if misused. And she didn't plan on misusing it.

[hr]

[h2]Raymond Haywood: Icehouse Hideout[/h2]
'It does. Thank you again,' Headhunter stated, quietly sipping his drink as, for some insane reason, Chatterbox chose to make a rather large scene. Yes, of course they were subordinate to the Broker; that was the point of being hired by the man, surely? He paid them money, they did his bidding. The most basic employer-employee relationship around. And so what if he'd never heard of him before? He'd never heard of David Bjornson either, until he was hired to kill the man. Still, Raymond wasn't exactly impressed with the chatterbox, and he figured the Broker wouldn't be either.

For that matter, neither was the nameless girl on the team, who shortly after the prettyboy ceased his prattle introduced herself as Sofia. No longer nameless, then. 'Nice to meet you, Sofia,' Raymond said fairly congenially, at least by his standards, which might appear to others to be fairly refined thanks to the volume his voice lacked. 'Do forgive me for not introducing myself as readily as you have. My identity is valuable knowledge to... a few people.' Technically true, if "a few" meant the majority of governments around the world, the US in particular. Still, if a government was considered a person... it wasn't, if he recalled, but he could pretend it was, and that made things a lot easier for him in this particular case.