sunnydalealum | (no subject)

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Things have been hectic at Wolfram & Hart over the past few days.

It's kind of understandable that there hasn't yet been opportunity to get anyone in to reglaze the broken window in one of the twelfth-floor conference rooms. There's been cardboard and heavy canvas tacked down over it with tape, against the weather, and for the moment that's all.

It's not as though it's a security risk, after all. The window's twelve stories up, and there's no fire escape nearby.

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The thief takes a moment to still herself and look around, taking in everything about the room in a glance.

Then she crosses the room in seconds and tries the door.

Edited 2007-12-16 23:41 (UTC)

This room was mentioned as one of the possible places the Scythe might be, but an unlikely possibility. It's clearly not here, even concealed; Mel would be able to sense its proximity.

The door's locked, but it's of the kind that can be unlocked by twisting a flange on the inside doorknob.

It takes longer than Mel would feel comfortable admitting to figure out what the flange does - she's almost decided to break the lock when she figures out the ancient mechanism and unlocks it.

All the while listening at the door, Mel opens it just far enough to let herself out.

~~Slayers~~ Zhirelin are good at moving quietly.

Melissa's just inexperienced enough to not muffle her intake of breath as she draws back to swing at the intruder, giving maybe a half-second's warning.

Melaka has been doing this for a long time. A long long time. She wouldn't call herself an inexperienced Slayer, and she's been breaking and enterring for about twice as long as that.

Her hand snaps up to block the attack, but at the same time she barrels forward against the wall, clasping a hand over her attacker's mouth.

Inexperienced, maybe, but strong and fast -- and determined to prove herself after letting herself be sucker-punched by the Council's mole.

One of Melissa's hands comes up to close around her attacker's hand and wrist, putting pressure on the weak joint of the thumb to try to break her grip. The other fumbles at the walkie-talkie on her belt.

That's all Melaka needed. She gives in to the attack on her hand, twisting her wrist to minimise damage, but not diverting much energy to fighting there. The real movement is to bring her knee up sharply across her body to kick the comm device away from them both.

And to dart her other hand in at one of Steph's favoured pressure points on nape of the girl's neck.

She manages to twist and duck away from that hand, but at the cost of losing the walkie-talkie.

With a harsh wordless exclamation of anger, Melissa drives a punch at the invader's gut.

Mel tenses, and takes the punch with a soundless exhalation as she flies back across the corridor. The seperation gives her room to move, straight towards trhe stun gun holstered onher thigh.

In the next second, she's standing, and her silence is broken by the crackling of discharged electricity.

Melissa's distracted briefly by the bizarre shape of the weapon, but only briefly -- it's a weapon, and one she doesn't recognize.

By the time Melaka fires, Melissa is already diving away. The first bolt's corona barely grazes her leg.

The trouble is: they're in an office corridor. There's no cover.

Melaka's moving too - not chasing Melissa so much as diving towards the walkie-talkie.

But the gun barrel moves quickly, following Melissa, and the second blast counters for her movement. So does the third.

Yeah, she's out.

It's suddenly very quiet again in this stretch of hallway.

There's no movement, and the only sound is the walkie-talkie, lying on the carpet a few feet from where Melissa went down in an unconscious heap.

**crackle** "-in, Melissa. Melissa, can you hear me? Over."

It's not going to keep a Slayer down for long, Mel knows that. But she also hasn't got time to secure her for long, and is already heading down the corridor towards her next location as she scoops up the walkie-talkie.

"This is Mel."

It's not even a lie.

The voice on the other end is terse, businesslike. **crackle** "Find the perimeter breach yet?"

Mel slows to a quick stride to make sure her voice doesn't sound tired, as well as to hide her surprise this might be working.

"Yeah, some dumb bird flew into that broken window on twelfth. Situation normal."

"Flew in and got through?" The other voice sounds startled. "Is it still there?"

"No," Mel replies, sounding surprised it should be. "It was, but I got rid of it. Everything's fine, now."

An exasperated breath that makes the crackle level jump. "You should've kept it to examine. Did it occur to you that somebody could be using a bird to try to get in?"

"Yeah, that's why I got rid of it quickly as possible," Mel says, turning a corner in the corridor as she strolls along quickly.

"Figured the longer it stayed in, the more time they had."

She wonders how long she can carry on bullshitting before they catch on to her.

"Hmp." Grudging. "Guess that wasn't bad thinking. All right. You'd better stay up there while I get someone to fix the window cover. Standard check-in, you know the drill. Brianna out."

A final crackle and click. It looks for the moment like she's gotten away with her brief impersonation.

Well, at least Melissa is up there.

Mel glances down at the piece of ancient machinery in her hand, then digs her thumb straight through the most solid part to desable it, before dropping it into one of the pouches on her belt.

That done, she breaks into a fast but quiet jog, towards possible Scythe hiding place #2.

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