Take To Church || Stakeout, Break In

[xp_havok]

Alex, Arthur, and Hope have been watching the Church, and figure out something odd.



Alex finished off the last of his soda, sighing when the straw sucked up nothing but air. Uber Eats was making a killing of them today. "Have we seen anyone leave this place yet?" he asked, tilting his head. He remembered quite a few people going in, but nobody coming out in the last couple of hours. That was weird, right?

"Not for quite a while." Hope agreed, narrowing her eyes as she once more scanned the building. With a sigh she reached over and pulled the chicken salad from the bag in front of her. "I wonder if some kind of big event might be going on where everyone is going too. Was there anything on their website about that?"

All it took to check that was a considering look from their third party member, a flick of the phone, and bam. "Nope. Nothing still on the schedule tonight, and definitely not anything about going in and never leaving. Although maybe this church is just really engaging? Is there a Yelp for churches?" That same considered look crossed Arthur's face, lit by the phone in his hand, before he mentally shrugged off the idea. His eyes returned to the Church entrance. "Wouldn't it be cool if they happened to have underground tunnels or everyone inside is being teleported to a heavenly plane or something? Less cool: they just have a hidden back entrance. We checked for that one, right?"

"I went around earlier, didn't see any other doors," Alex said. "I feel like that's gotta be a safety violation or something. Unless your heavenly plane theory checks out."

"I think something rapturing them is rather out there, but the underground tunnels are an interesting one. Too bad those blueprints are not arriving until tomorrow." Hope tapped her fork on the plastic bowl as she thought. "A little scouting sounds like a good solution." Her eyes narrowed as she studied the building. "I should be able to stay in the walls mostly."

"Might be a thought." Alex ran a hand through his hair. "Is it B&E if you're technically not breaking into anything?"

"O ye of little faith. They won't even see me." Hope carefully put away her salad, leaned back and closed her eyes as the flower unfolded in her mind. 'I will report in every fifteen minutes.' She sent telepathically as she sunk through the bottom of the car.

Alex leaned back in the chair, still watching the church. "What do you think the chances are we're just overreacting and nothing is going on?"

Arthur didn't miss a beat. "I'm sure it'll all be okay! What could go wrong?" Then... "Is she gone yet? How does this work exactly? Think she needs, like, a pillow or something?" The blonde leaned in toward Hope's now clearly limp body and poked her hesitantly. Nope, nada.

"She'll be okay as long as we don't try to throw her out of the car or something," Alex said dryly, to sip his soda out of habit. Empty. Right. It's gonna be a hot minute unless she finds something right away."

Trying to recall the descriptions of the layout and cursing their lack of blue prints at the same time, it took Hope a while to find her way to main hall of the building. It looked like a common church with pews, a lectern and a large wooden cross at the wall. The room was empty though. Hovering for a moment, Hope picked up the sounds of chanting, but before she could make a move, someone entered and went to a discreet door behind the altar. The chanting grew louder when the door opened.

When the door had closed again, Hope carefully moved through the walls to the door and found a set of stairs behind it. Still staying in the walls, she made her way down. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, her eyes widened at the sight of the girl chained in the midst of a circle of chanting people. She took a few moments to take in as many details as possible and to get an accurate count of the people, but then headed straight back to the car.



Rescue does not go as planned. At all.

Trigger Warning: Gun Violence



There was absolutely nothing subtle about the way Alex blew the doors off the small room connected to the main chapel. The front door hadn't been locked, and he didn't have patience for pick-locking after what Hope had told them. The blast and subsequent crash of the doors blowing in echoed through the suddenly very still as the parishioners turned to look at what holy hell had just been rained on them. Everyone was silent except for the young woman tied to a table, crying and struggling to get loose.

"Yo," Alex said, raising a fist that was glowing with energy. Incapacitate, leave for the police to arrest. He needed to remind himself.

The priest was the first to recover. "They've been sent by the Devil himself! Stop them!"

"Shut your mouth." Hope snapped when she followed Alex into the room, quickly taking in the situation. "You miserable piece of humankind." She started straight for where the girl was tied down, stepping out of the way and neatly tripping one man who rushed at her. Fighting was not her strong suit, but the years of self defense training at the mansion had given her a good grounding.

The light from Alex's glowing fist was matched with a second, softer glow as Arthur, entering last, took up position by the door with a wary frown toward everyone that was now staring daggers at them. His frown only deepened as the congregants arose from their seated positions to advance upon and waylay the three of them. Fortunately, this wasn't a trained special ops squad.

"Hey now everyone, let's all just take a second to chill and ask ourselves: who is the real bad guy here? Is it us, or the idea that anyone should be strapped to a table?" Arthur tried to smile to match this statement, hands spread, but it quickly faltered as the crazed zealots didn't stop or chill. He sighed, and readied himself to help keep people from either leaving due to his position as rear guard or to step in to help Hope or Alex as need be.

Alex took up a position in front of Hope, clocking the priest first with his glowing fist before pulling the billy club off his belt and hitting someone in the head. It wasn't hard enough to hurt the man. Much.

The girl was crying as Hope approached, half hysterical and half shocked at the sudden turn in events. "W-What-?"

Behind the two, the parishioner's offensive had turned into a slight comedy of errors as Arthur stepped in and around the very angry church combatants, still frowning, blocking punches and stabs with improvised weapons. Someone had gotten very creative with a candle holder and another had a taser, but they weren't a unit or used to fighting together, if at all -- easy enough to deflect the candle swing into the taser holder, which in turn caused little bolts of electricity to spark as the tazer hit off course into another assailant.

"Okay, let's get you out of here. I am Hope." Hope addressed Anne before launching a sharp elbow in the stomach of the person who tried to pull her away from the girl. Frowning when she saw Anne was tied down with zipties, Hope reached into her pocket for her Swiss Army knife.

"What are you doing?" A woman pushed her way through the people. "We're trying to help her!"

"Help her how?" Hope shot back as she started cutting the first ziptie.

There were tears swimming in the girl's eyes. "Mom, please..."

"She's been taken by the Devil!" Alex had broken the priest's nose, but the stream of blood wasn't stopping him from spitting his words out. Alex was about to whack him again, but was interrupted by a surprisingly large, burly man coming at him, and he swung the billy club to hit him the side, aiming for the kidney. He didn't see the priest pull a gun from his robes, but the shots rang in his ears, deafening him to any other noise.

"No!" This cry was matched with the gunshot, even if Alex could hear it, but Arthur's eye blazed as his all business attitude flared into outright panic as the situation elevated extremely quickly. He lunged to put himself, and his luck, between the priest and anyone, but Arthur had never been a speeder. But the time he was within reach of his teammates, it was too late.

Hope felt something warm and wet spattering on her hand and time suddenly seemed to accelerate again. People around her were screaming and she looked around. People were rushing out the room as quickly as possible, but the girl beneath her hand didn't move and Hope looked down to see her glassy eyes. A bullet had torn through her neck, just inches away from where Hope had stood, painting the table in the middle a lurid red.

The entire room had gone very, very still as the echo of gunshots in the small area faded away. Alex had frozen, club still out, as he tried to process what the hell had just happened. The parishioners who hadn't yet been taken out by Alex or Arthur or ran away were staring, wide-eyed, at the man they had been following. Alex slowly let his arm drop to his side and turned; the first thing he saw was the gun, and he didn't hesitate to slam a glowing fist into priest's arm. He howled, dropping the gun as he went down - it was entirely possible Alex had broken more than his arm. He didn't care. He kicked the gun away, just to be safe. It slid across the floor, stopping near another pool of blood. He walked slowly toward it, his heart jumping into his throat. It was Anne's mother - the one who had started all this. The bigot who had abandoned her own daughter and willingly brought her into this room to be tortured. He looked at the table and saw Anne, in a similar state as her mother. Then looked around the room, seeing the one or two people who had been to scared to run, in addition to the unconscious bodies on the floor.

"Tie 'em up," he muttered, hooking his club back onto his belt and looking down at the sniveling priest on the floor. "And what do we do with you?"

"No, no, no," the other blonde man seemed to have missed Alex's directive, and instead was scrambling over the body of the mother, with his eyes darting frantically between the fallen woman and her daughter. It had been very unlucky for that wild one shot to hit and kill two people: the kid through the neck, the mother into the heart. Luck. Arthur's lip quibbled at that thought, as he looked desperately for any signs of life. Maybe they weren't dead. This wasn't how this was supposed to go down. This wasn't what he did.

Hope had taken the moment to carefully close Anne's eyes, carefully locking down her emotions one by one. Her eyes were ice cold when she approached approached the priest. "I guess we have to let the authorities deal with him, but how about we call QQ beforehand? He'd have some idea's on what to do with this piece of scum before we hand him over." Her voice was even colder than her eyes.

Tempting. Oh, it was tempting. "If I thought he could get here in time... too bad we don't have any teleporters on hand." Alex shook his head, running his fingers through his hair. "We should look around before the police get here. And not take too long to call."

His eyes fell on the bodies again, and he gritted his teeth. No love lost for the woman who had abandoned her daughter and then wormed her way back into her life just to hand her over to a cult. But Anne... she'd deserved better. Better than this.

It took a second for Arthur, still bent over near the mother, to realize that the others were talking. He blinked up at them, his eyes scanning the room in its aftermath. Two casualties. One injured priest. Seven unconscious or subdued extremists, with another five or so who had ran. They were on a timer. Still... "No. That's not what we do. We," and he paused here to look at the girl, "Help people. Let the police handle this."

He got up, brushing himself off in an attempt to collect his cool and what had to come next. "All we can do now is let her dad know."