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Callie’s instincts [i]screamed[/i].

[color=f7941d]“We have incoming!  Hostile antiquarian, strong – duck and cover!”[/color]  She herself was already hitting the floor, pushing off to slide under her chair and already summoning Charter to her hand, staring out of the window behind them as a dark blur crashed to the ground beyond it and kicked up a wave of dust.

In the next moment, she was summoning a portal beyond the figure, just big enough to cast her sight across from it and let her take in what had suddenly become a battlefield.  What she saw vanished the piercing rime of anger, sublimated at once to the vaporous chill of fear.

Then she took in the rest of the scene – the girl her own age, their newest recruit, surrounded by a guard totally incapable of protecting her from such a threat, their only slightly less new recruit forming in a blur beside her with the haste of one propelled by survival.  And the fire of the guardian within her rose to meet it.

[color=f7941d][i]Do I – could blow cover – no, we’ve all been told enough to recognise them; familiarity here’s[/i] entirely [i]believable.[/i]  “No lie – that’s her,”[/color] Callie intoned, steadily, carefully climbing back out from beneath her seat.  She looked away from her spyglass for all the time it took to let her sapphire eyes lock onto a man she could not say she liked but was nonetheless confident in.  [color=f7941d]“Myron, get on the airwaves, now,”[/color] she said at a volume only a few degrees from a shout.  [color=f7941d]“We can’t evacuate a municipality in ten minutes but we can get anyone moving who isn’t and keep it from turning to chaos.  Someone else, I need everyone in the building who isn’t fighting – get them here in three minutes for evac.”[/color]

She turned to the rest of them.  [color=f7941d]“A-Rank Arms Master.  Highly resistant to physical and mental effects; uses small arms and agility as complements.  Her shield stores people it touches to gain their knowledge and capabilities.  No telling what the PRC’s armed her with, besides an unknown flight-adjacent power and some kind of meteor-calling.  She has one suspended under her control over the Hall, half-molten, a dozen metres wide.  There may be others.”[/color]

[color=f7941d]“Sergeant Janssens, you’re our best direct response to the target but we need to get you close fast enough so she can’t react with her shield or stolen powers.  Preliminary proposal is you, Cristina, or me.  Anything to slow or pin her would be an ideal accompaniment.”[/color]  Callie clenched her jaw.  [color=f7941d]“We also need someone who can neutralise the giant rock.  I can shred it but that doesn’t solve the weight or the heat.”[/color]

She spared a moment’s glance out again – no change yet – before addressing her team once again, determination searing through her.  [color=f7941d]”What do we have to work with?”[/color]