[color=lightgreen][center][h3][i][b]Day 2: 06:19:51 Polavian Standard Vodka Distillery, Novy Jork, Capital Province, Republic of Polavia [/b][/i][/h3][/center][/color] Shite. [i]Shite.[/i] His cover’s blown. Well, blown’s relative. They’ll still have some trouble. “Feck it all,” grumbles Upswing, pulling back his rifle and shrugging it back to his shoulder, “don’t get paid enough for this.” He makes a rather crude-looking hand gesture and makes a point out of his mind. In a hissing burst of light, about a dozen illusory tripwires spring into existence over the door leading in, in the hallway outside, on the staircase leading up to this floor. It won’t be much help once they realize they aren’t real, but that’s why one of the wires over the door–and the hand grenade it’s attached to–very much is. Standing, he turns and bellows in the most Scottish accent known to man, “OI! ‘YE DIDNAE CATCH ME AND ‘YE NEVER WILL, ‘YE [i]PINKO CUNTS![/i]” Before the Polavians can give their own impressive selection of profanities back, Upswing’s already pitched himself out the window, catching himself on the sill with his hands before he can fall. He looks down; too high to jump, not high enough to risk climbing down the safe way and getting caught. He used to be afraid of heights, you know, but jumping out of a C-130 gets you quite used to taking a risk. And a risk he sees. A balcony on the second floor, one down, about a five-foot horizontal jump. It leaves him with a choice; either go for the balcony and risk snapping himself in half on the railing if he under- or overshoots, or drop twenty or thirty feet and almost certainly break a leg. Well, what’s life without leaps of faith? Upswing, with a heavy grunt, swings himself to the side hard and pushes off, landing flat on his ass smack in the center of the balcony. “Ah, fookin’ A,” he groans, standing and rubbing his tailbone. “Look what ‘ye made me do.” “Let me see your hands!” comes a voice from inside. Upswing lets out a mother of all sighs and turns, hands raising, to find himself face-to-face with a kid in PSA uniform, shaking hands holding a shaking Kalashnikov. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen; shame, damn shame. “‘Ye don’t have tae be here, ‘ye know,” says Upswing, “‘ye can leave. Wouldn’t blame ‘ye.” “Don’t talk!” says the kid, muscling open the door to almost jab the rifle’s muzzle into Upswing’s chest. “That’s how it’s gonna be, then,” Upswing says, shaking his head a little, “‘ye’re too close.” Maybe the kid might’ve had something to say to that, but he doesn’t get the chance before Upswing slaps the gun out of his hand, sending it flying off the balcony. Before the kid can do anything but scream, Upswing’s already grabbed his pistol. There’s a short, sharp clicking noise, and a smoking casing hits the floor while the kid falls back, a smoking hole right between his eyes. “Mum’s worried about ‘ye,” says Upswing, holstering his gun and starting to climb down yet further, “shoulda stayed home.” From the second floor, it’s trivial to drop down and start running, and Upswing’s already gone into the bushes by the time the deafening blast of a triggered grenade rings out over the landscape from the apartment. In the brush, Upswing’s armor fades into it like a chameleon, and he slips away undetected, moving as quickly and quietly as he can towards the bottler. [i]Ptick, ptick. Ptick. Ptick, ptick, ptick.[/i] The few men still manning the perimeter near Upswing’s point of entry fall with quiet, rattling whimpers, as he drops the muzzle of his AS-Val. Judging by how the inside of the factory sounds like Stalingrad, there’s a good reason the patrols aren’t too numerous right now. Knife in hand, he rifles through the bodies, putting those simply mortally wounded out of their misery while he grabs their spare ammo, taking an AK for his trouble; no point being particularly stealthy. While he’s digging around, a loud, stuttering report of gunfire breaks through the factory wall behind him, and he drops to the floor with a loud curse, the contents of which would be inappropriate for written reproduction. Belly-crawling, he moves closer to the gunfire, hoping to rendezvous with Morgana and reasoning that she’s probably wherever they’re trying to shoot. Once he comes up to a side door that seems close to, but not in the middle of the fighting, he reaches for his gas mask and puts it on while he reaches for one of the pink-striped smoke grenades on his belt. “This better be fookin’ worth it,” he says to himself, shaking his head as he racks the bolt on the Kalashnikov, and then he reaches over and smashes the handle off the door with the butt of the rifle, knocking it open and tossing in the grenade. There’s a pop, and as oozing, pinkish-purple smoke creeps out, Upswing bursts in, firing at anything and everything that moves.