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Bliss looked up to Archer who took his position by her side. He spoke to her as though she could rightfully answer. A mixture of sounds came through the the red and black handkerchief tied through her teeth. Her eyes narrowed and darted down while she squirmed her hands against the ropes that kept her hands together. After rolling her hands around each other she only succeeded in bringing her hands closer to each other. This guy would need to get her out of this, but he needed to stop talking. By the time she could tell him that it would either be after he secured this situation or in Heaven, both would come too late, but one would keep them alive. The inability to speak granted Bliss the insight that things she said came out really bitchy.

"Young man, you have no right to speak to me in that manner. I'll make you regret this..." She started to regain her clarity. "Everyday that you wake up, or when your body recomposes itself after another one of your inept little suicide attempts, you'll regret this. For what?" Pain came from her ankle; she twisted it when she tried to balance foot upon her heel. "For this girl? She'll die and you'll go on living. She can be another wasted life in your pathetic never ending existence. The chain of agony that you constantly tie around your neck to tighten the grip that you will never have over your life. That's all you have, a millstone."

Blades roared into action from the helicopter pad outside. An elderly man rolled into the calamity that occupied the room. From behind his wheelchair a guard bounced into action to try and occupy Roland. With the abrupt distraction the Baroness rolled behind the over sized desk to try and make her way to the helipad. Bliss kicked her bound feet against the floor to remove herself from the fray of this confrontation. Only a few inches gave way with each of her kicks while she felt the pain in her heels like her she was trying to force her heels into her calves.

Nothing about shoving herself behind an elderly man in this kind of situation bothered the limping woman. The old man crashed out of his wheel chair and onto the carpeted floor; by his reaction the action of violence directed towards him and the feel of carpet were things he left behind long ago. "Get ready for take off." She shouted over the roar of the rutters.

As Archer watched the Baroness, ready to get to work untying Eclipse from her chair, everything seemed to go from bad to worse in one swift motion. When a man came into the room, being pushed by another one of the armed thugs, Roland’s attention was dropped from the evil woman and she made for an escape, even on what looked to be a sprained ankle. She barreled past the furniture in the room and even threw the old man in the wheelchair over, as if that really sped anything up. As all of this happened, the man who had entered pushing the man in the wheel chair was advancing on Roland and had already begun to open fire, aiming for what seemed to be Eclipse. Roland almost lunged to his side to shield the tied up woman from getting hit by the bullets, only one of which tagged him, catching him in the right shoulder. Dropping to his knees for a second, the wound was already beginning to heal and push the bullet out of his skin but the shoulder was still broken and would be useless for a little while.

Taking off at a low run Archer came at the man as fast as he could run and as soon as he was within range he leapt straight at him. Bringing his feet up meet the back of his legs, he made to take the man down with a double knee right to the upper chest but the man was quicker than expected and managed to shift to the left and only took one of the knees, knocking him off balance and forcing him to the floor. Archer barely managed to recover from his half failed attack but he was already on his feet which gave him an advantage over his opponent, one which he would take full advantage. The regenerating man kicked the man in the jaw, which let out a loud pop that gave the sign that it was either broken or very badly fractured, dropping him instantly.

Looking back Roland saw Eclipse still tied to a chair and he knew that if he wanted to have any chance of catching the Baroness he would have to leave his partner, though he still was not sure how much of a partner she really was. Quickly he said all he could think of in that moment, “I’ll be back for you in a little bit, Eclipse. I want to go stop that psycho chick before she gets away with my blood.” That still perturbed Roland to no end, what could she possibly do with his blood? Could she replicate his curse? Though there were many questions coming to mind Roland turned from Eclipse and ran after the woman with the sprained ankle.

He caught up to her quickly enough once he threw open the door to the helipad, catching the Baroness halfway between the helicopter and himself. He raised his gun and aimed it straight at her again. Roland did not want to resort to shooting the woman at all but she was obviously setting out to do something that would put many lives at risk, or worse yet kill. “Stop,” He yelled to the woman, who came to an abrupt stop and turned around giving him an intense stare. “You won’t be going anywhere.” Archer tried to sound as confident as he possibly could but he knew that he was on the brink of failure, everything was finally coming back to him; what he had done, how many people he had taken down, the robots, and even Eclipse. He would not let her or anyone be hurt, not again.

Roland took off away from his current objective of untying Bliss's hands. Bliss kicked her feet and objected to his departure in a mumbled manner. The action ensued, leaving Bliss to fend for herself against the body guards Roland left in the midst of the room with her. Consciousness returned to the downed man, prompting Bliss to swing her chair towards him. She pivoted her motion of gravity to impact the hard leg against his head. Readying her blast, she positioned the chair over the man and sent out a blast of energy to incapacitate the man.

"That's a poor choice of actions, boy." The Baroness spoke coldly. "Just admit defeat. Why do you even attempt to fight back anymore? There are people who determine history, and those who sadly sit by and watch events unfold." She began to step back towards the helicopter, leaving behind the elderly man. In her mind she could never admit defeat. It never came across her. "You could have taken my help, but instead you chose your curse of immortality. Good-bye, darling."

Over the aroma of an over perfumed woman hang the distinct smell of gasoline. Cost cutting measures supplied the syndicate corporation a private supply of fuel that they barreled in to resupply the helicopter for measures such as these. The Baroness stepped to walk back to the helicopter not fearing the reprisal of the man. She gambled with her life, but knew that she always kept an outlet into people's heads. She giggled at the outrage that Bliss kept to herself, and the indecision that Roland currently showed. She knew what cards to play, because she knew what everyone's hand looked like.

The woman, the Baroness as everyone seemed to know her as, stood before Roland and spoke to him almost as though he did not have a gun trained on her. It was obvious she could see the reluctance to fire the weapon on her; killing had never been Roland’s first choice and never would be. She then turned and began walking to the helicopter again. She was not afraid of him at all, he was running out of ways to keep her their without killing her where she stood. That is when he smelt it, gasoline. Where it was coming from Archer could not tell so he looked at the obvious place first, around the fuel tank of the helicopter, and sure enough there was a strange rainbow on the ground. A puddle of gasoline was dripping down from the tank.

Roland started running for the woman, whether she heard him or not was none of his concern, and opened fire on the helicopter and the source of ignition. He shot several times but it lit up on the fourth bullet that connected and before it was even fathomable the entire vehicle was caught in flames, unusable for anyone. The pilots even evacuated without even shutting the engine or the propellers off. It did not take long for the machine to become something more like a fire tornado than any sort of vehicle. As all of this happened Roland continued forward toward the Baroness and prepared to attack her with everything he had in him. She turned around to fight him, even with a sprained ankle, but it was obvious that she did not have the same level of training or natural ability he did from her stance.

She tried to block but Roland twisted around and spun a kick into her side sending her off balance. Even though it was obvious that she was the one in trouble she cracked a grin and came at Roland with surprising speed. Her next three punches all landed in Archer’s midsection, finding the holes in his style as though she had read them from a book, and when he tried to return the slew of attacks she blocked them without so much as a struggle. Archer knew that the woman had something big up her sleeve, as though she had all of the blueprints to how he fought.

Taking a chance and throwing himself back into the fight, Roland did not know how she was fighting him so well but that would not stop him. He punched, jabbed, kicked, and countered everything he could but she was still holding him off, though it was obvious that she was beginning to get tired. “I don’t know how you’re fighting so well but it looks like this fight should be over pretty soon and I’ll see to it myself that you’re taken into custody and held responsible for everything you’ve done so far.” Archer was angry but he was doing a decent job of hiding it for the most part. “I’m pretty sure those robots you built are against some rule the United Nations passed sometime in the past.”

"I am above the law." The Baroness gritted her teeth and prepared for her next volley of attacks. She needed something to leverage against the man. He responded and withstood her verbal attacks with such fervor. She twisted the truth like a dagger into his mind, but still he kept fighting her. "I answer to no one. Haven't you learned anything from me? I steal the answers to your life, and work them with perfect form." Baroness knelt before Roland, pulling a small knife from her stiletto heel. "Every block you put up gave me more insight into who you are, you weak, scared little boy." She threw the knife towards Roland's throat with viscous intent. In the moment of action she grabbed the knife in her other heel and lunged towards the ledge to send Roland over the ledge.

Bliss kept her feet moving. The tethers around her ankles kept her secure, but she could muster up enough force to remain mobile. She continued moving about the room; she figured the worst thing she could do was sit still. Whether right or wrong, Bliss pushed her way towards the Baroness's desk. She pushed herself forward, trying to move her face close enough to push the handkerchief away from her mouth, but could only push against the ropes that held her to the chair. Several overly sharp letter openers littered her desk. Bliss turned her chair around and tried to move her hands onto the desk to grab one, but her actions rang futile with her arms tied so low. Still Bliss continued on in vain to secure the means for her escape.

Roland listened to the woman as she began to ramble, seeming to get more and more angry with every passing second, which was making her a little more sloppy and giving more information than she probably should have. It all became crystal clear how she was reading his moves almost before he was even making his moves, she was reading his mind every time he made contact with her. Archer began to remedy that situation by dodging and refusing to make physical contact with the Baroness. “I will never quit fighting people like you, monsters. You’ll hurt people and I won’t let people suffer the way I have,” Archer said with complete conviction.

The Baroness quickly pulled a knife from the heel and threw it, with surprising accuracy, straight for his neck but he moved his body to the right, closer to the edge of the building, and out of the way of the thrown weapon. Though he evaded the weapon thrown at him the woman used his distraction to attack him head on with another knife, attempting to tackle him and knock him over the ledge of the building. Archer took the knife to his stomach and fell off the side of the building but the woman had not planned ahead well enough and was falling forward with him, still holding onto the knife planted in him.

Archer turned his body and grabbed onto the first thing he could find, a wire hanging over the side of the building, and held on for dear life. The woman then began to fall past him tearing the knife in his stomach down and out of him but Archer grabbed for the woman with his hand and caught her by the arm that still had the knife in its grasp. “I’ve got you.” Archer said through ragged breath, exerting himself a lot to simply hold the woman up. “I’ll get you out of this.” Even though the woman was trying to kill him Archer did not want to simply let her fall to her death.

"I can get myself out of this." Her wretched hand reached up and grasped Roland. With the motion of her open handed palm she latched onto Roland's body and searched his mind. "How precious, you really wanted to save me." Building on the lack of action Roland could take, the Baroness sought to press one final jab into the man's stomach quite literally. She reached her hand to grab the knife and wiggled the blade; the warm blood coursed over her hand and drenched her hand in the viscosity of victory.

Baroness smiled in her certain victory, even if Roland fell Baroness kept her hand on the pole and could easily save herself. With victory assured the Baroness reached up with her blood drenched hand and grasped the bar to pull herself up. Everything fell within her grasp now, but her grip fell away from her. The blood on her hand slipped onto the cement ledge and left the Baroness reaching for anything. Her vision locked on the image of the old man, struggling to get back to his chair. She could see the guard broken on the ground, and the girl trying to escape. With rage the Baroness reached to grab the old man by the leg and pull herself up. Her strength pulled at the old man and when her blood drenched hand slipped on the rough textured surface she felt herself lose control.

The Baroness tumbled down with the ancient old man falling behind her. From the lofty heights of the tower, the ground greeted the two with no compassion. They spilled along the ground all the secrets that they kept with themselves for years.

Archer watched the woman as she plummeted to the ground along with the old man that had managed to get outside somehow. The regenerating man just turned his eyes away so he would not have to watch them hit the merciless ground. Roland pulled himself up from the ledge, the knife wound already closing itself, and made his way back to Eclipse slowly. He glanced at the burning helicopter which was already beginning to die down now that there was little to burn since the gasoline had almost completely evaporated now. For some reason the walk back to the room where Eclipse was felt longer than it had been when he chased after the Baroness.

Once he finally made it back to Eclipse he began to untie her right away, caring little whether she was a good person or a not so good person. “I don’t know if what she said was true, Eclipse,” He still refused to call her by the name the Baroness had called her because it had not been Eclipse herself that told him, “but that doesn’t matter. You’re still alright in my eyes.” He finally managed to finish untying her as he waited to see how she would respond to everything that had happened to the two of them. “Are you okay,” He asked shyly.

The failed struggle Bliss tried to undertake to rescue herself finally came to a stop. She felt Archer begin untying her wrists. She murmured into her gag while he began to talk. He let her know that he did not care about who she was or what she did. She sat quietly while he worked on untying the ropes that kept her tied to the chair. She wiggled her arms, but the Baroness tied her arms separate from those that kept her to the chair. Archer asked her if she was okay; she murmured louder to him. Seeing what she wanted, Archer untied the handkerchief around her mouth and lowered it around her neck. All of the calamity settled around her; she needed to find her computer and get out of this terrible place. "I guess I'm fine." She breathed easy.

Archer finished untying Bliss's arms giving her freedom to move more fluidly and leaned down to untie the ropes keeping her legs to the chair. "We need to get my computer and get out of here." Archer freed her ankles and Bliss stood to her feet. "Call me Bliss from now on." She looked to the ledge of the building; nothing needed to be said to explain the situation. "Now let's get moving." Bliss took the lead on the escape. She knelt behind the door reaching down to rub her legs where the Baroness kept her restrained. "I hope you did enough damage down there. Well here we go." Bliss shot out down the hall and slid down the stair railing to the observation deck. The time came to take back her computer from this corrupt group.

Archer watched in silence as Bliss began to untie her own legs but he quickly moved to help her and she was free from the chair in only a matter of moments and then she began to speed up the pace of things without missing a beat. She moved to the door and voiced her hope that Archer had taken care of everyone in the lower floors to which he gave a simple answer as he touched the multiple bullet holes covering his shirt, “Yeah, I put more than a few of them down for the time being.” The woman left quickly and Roland chased after her as best he could and answered what few questions he could. “I hid that thing the evil woman hooked up to the computer if that’s what we’re looking for,” Archer said after a short time running.

“I stashed it in a bag on the floor we were being held capture on,” Archer said with a confident air, having taken down a crazy woman and possibly saved a lot of lives he was feeling pretty good now. “Follow me and I’ll show you right where it is,” He waved his hand for the woman to follow him and he took off for one of the far walls once they were on the correct floor. He had placed it under a desk and within a plain looking satchel that from the outside did not seem to be very special. Pulling it out from under the desk, Archer handed it to his companion. “Here you go, Bliss.”

It all looked just as she told Archer to do. Guards sprawled along the empty laboratory. Now she just needed to make her way to get her computer. "What?" She said in preparation of her actions. Her leg rested against a desk that held the computer that the Baroness planned on using to show Bliss and Archer's execution. The greenscreen back drop on the computer looked programmed to show a derelict warehouse somewhere lower in a predominantly immigrant region of Berlin. Baroness's team of propagandist already wrote the news release. Heroic metahuman and American reporter killed by Foreign Extremist. Nice.

"You already got it?" Archer made his way to a compartment where he hid the computer. Looks like he took care of one of their problems. Two or three if you counted saving Bliss, twice. Now she needed an escape route. "You wouldn't happen to know how to escape from her would you?"

Archer listened to Bliss’s question and it was a good one. He had been unconscious when he was drug into the place and had no idea what the layout of the building was. “I don’t know the exact layout of the building but I do know that a lot of the guards a beat up came from that way,” Archer then pointed to a door to their left. “That might not be a bad direction to head,” There was no proof to support his claim but he began to walk in the direction he had indicated, not sure if Bliss would follow him or not.

On the other side of the door was a long hallway with more than a few doors down either side along with some stairs leading down at the end of it. I could not possibly be a bad idea to go closer to the ground in this labyrinth of a building. “I think this should take us down to the lower levels of the building,” He called out behind himself to his companion. “Do you want to take the lead?” He asked the Asian woman with a slight smile. He was trying to make light of the mood now that it seemed most of the trouble was over.

In the large room where the Baroness had made her final showdown a single guard rose from the floor, holding a bloody shoulder with his hand. He had been shot at some point but it had happened so fast he could barely remember how it had even happened. Making his way over to the computer sitting on a desk he typed in a series of codes and then pressed a button that raised another large cylinder that opened, revealing a large golem of a robot. With another click of the keyboard it was set to security mode and would kill anyone that was not supposed to be in the building. The golem walked off down the hall looking for two intruders as the man fell to the floor, slipping into a coma.

Hydraulic pumps sounded through the walls loosening debris from the wall.

"Yeah, I'll take the lead from here; just hand me my computer." Bliss reached out her hand awaiting the return of her computer. "We should probably just retrace our steps back to the loading bay that brought us in from. I can unlock any doors that may hold us back." Silence fell on Bliss's ear; the sound of the rising hydraulics came to a stop. At first it came as a non-issue to her, but thundering steps made her rethink that. "Let's get out of here." Not wanting to lose focus of the severity of the situation Bliss made her way down the grated staircase to the main observation level.

Whatever Archer did down here it worked. No guards looked like they could put up a fight against the fleeing duo. Bliss stopped at the terminal in which Baroness made her display how the computer worked. Whatever they built looked like it would fit well within a lab Bliss could build. Maybe this whole place would. "We need to take this interface with us." Slender fingers began to feel around to pull wires apart from the computers the Baroness used. "Also the computers. And I'll want that glass tube if we can take it." Over ambition ran strongly through Bliss, but even that shook at the massive step that rang through the upper levels. "We need a hook up." Bliss diverted her attention from detaching wires and began to hook them into her quantum computer. How these things hooked up into any kind of primary database was beyond Bliss, but she could find out what type of security protocols these guys installed.

Archer let Bliss take the lead and he watched and followed as she went down the hallways, taking a turn here and there but they were getting lower so it must have been the right way. Then she stopped and looked into a room that held little interest for Archer, little interest now days anyway, a laboratory. She walked in and Archer slowly followed suit, “Shouldn’t we be getting out of here.” She then gave him orders and despite his better judgment he did what she instructed him to do, holding things and helping her take a few things apart.

Then they heard it. The massive stomps of a mechanized golem, something Archer would have a hard time forgetting anytime soon. Even though he had lived through the experience of one of those machines stepping on his head it was never easy to forget such a traumatic experience. “I guess I’ll be the one to keep it busy,” Archer said in response to Bliss getting to work with her computer thing. As he looked around to the door where it seemed the gigantic footsteps were coming from he was greeted by the machine in question. “Looks like we have less time than we thought,” Archer ran forward and kicked the mech with all the force he had, which did nothing. The machine lurched forward and attempted to step on the healer but he narrowly rolled out of the way.

“You might want to hurry up,” Archer yelled as he side stepped a metallic fist hitting an old and brittle wall. The photographer took up his strategy from when he fought two of the things at once, avoid and let it destroy itself. “I’m not really sure how long I can keep this up. This thing is pretty fast.” Archer then glanced back to see what Bliss was doing and was then knocked into a wall by a large robot’s foot.

A few numbers slid along the mainframe like a key into a lock. Encryption played in numerical complexities, but regardless of how random they feel they embed these codes no one could ever encrypt randomness. Just by assigning a number to something you rid it of the intangible nature that would consist of the randomness. Whether done by a computer or a person the matter still persisted that observing the number gave it a property. Bliss new this all too well and picked apart the coding that tried to keep her out.

Across the room a mindless robot assaulted her companion. Maybe his observations about the severity of time and situation would make her work faster, or maybe needing to get the two of them out of this dreadful place would do it. Simply turning off a switch or clicking a button in the mainframe would not do. She needed to rewrite a kill code into the cybernetic brain that the automaton possessed. Processed brain pairings showed a rudimentary artificial intelligence. At the age of four Bliss once made Cleverbot understand the reality of God, only to destroy the delusions of eternity held by the machine. This would only take a few moments.

Lines of commands ran down the screen. This would be her starting place and the machines end. With movement of her fingers she brushed the keystrokes to run a command entry to subject the creature to a fail safe that would put the machine down. The first two fail safes did not cancel out the operating system but caused them to cancel out defensive protocols. Like placing a mirror in between a laser grid the defenses remained in tact so no auxiliary defenses triggered themselves to come to the aid of the operating system.

Bliss went to work with the final deathblow that would deliver her final blow to shutdown the machine once and for all. With the other defensive operations cancelling each other out Bliss slipped the the code into the brain like a subtle suggestion, ushering the machine to fall silent while it continued its brutal surge of attacks against Archer.

The robot was maintaining a consistent fighting ability, being a machine and needing no sleep probably made that a lot easier. Archer was having a hard time keeping up after dodging attack after attack and he was starting to get tired. A fist flew for his head and he was barely able to get out of the way in time, allowing another fist to hit another wall, splintering another wall. Archer knew that things were going to get messy if the fight were to carry on for much longer. Archer then rolled underneath the automaton to try and get out of his direct line of sight and the robot tried and failed to stomp on him with a heavy metal foot.

The robot suddenly stopped and slouched, powering down right before Archer’s eyes, just as the building the two heroes stood in gave a loud groan. Archer gave the big metal behemoth a nudge and it fell to a large heap on the floor. Archer walked over to Bliss and gave her a tired, though still genuine, smile as he said, “Hey, nice job. I didn’t even have time to die once.” He gave her a thumbs up as he bent over and tried to breath deeper. After taking a moment to catch his breath he looked up at her and gave her another smile, this one less tired than before, “What do you say we find our way out of this madhouse?”

A ceiling tile fell from above and landed just to their left, Archer looked up to the ceiling and then back to Bliss and said, “I hope that doesn’t mean anything bad is about to happen.“ Above them a series of support beams broke in two and walls began to fall to the floor. The building was coming down around them. Archer ran over to the door and looked back at Bliss, “Maybe it’s time we got out of here.”