In the Crosshairs. - done

Jinx catches the drive the guy tossed in her direction and unshouldering her backpack, she extricated her laptop from it so she could plug in the drive and access the files. Using her hands this time, she brought up the files and skimmed them. She hadn't had a chance to review them in much detail earlier. As she concentrated on the files, her brow furrowed in a frown and she chewed on her lower lip.

Jinx glanced up when she felt the man moving, "Well, KnightSkye, you haven't told me wha...." She stoped when he snatched up a honest to god longbow and headed toward the door. "Hey! WHat's going on?" Her eyes flicked toward his computer screen and just caught a glimpse of the man that KnightSkye had already seen. "Oh man. Are you kidding me? I told you not to jack from your own place." She made short work of stowing her laptop back in her backpack and looked for somewhere to hide. "Shit, shit shit." She muttered.

"Me!? I've spent fucking weeks now accessing those files, slowly but surely sifting through those encryption; all of a sudden you show up and I've got armed twats at my house!" Knight is furious. He rolls up his sleeves and shouts out of the window "OI! DAFTY! YOU LOOKING FOR ME!?" There is a crack of gunfire and the window goes through. Knight barely has time to process that the girl is manipulating the data without even touching the keypad.

"Get under the bed!" he urges, as another guy gets out of the car. "Get the data to a safe server or the police or someone!" Knight instructs the girl. Disabling the elevator has brought the duo time, but they need a plan and quick. The webcam is still in the window and shows the two henchmen heading to the apartment door. Pandemonium breaks out n the apartment.

KnightSkye yelling at her makes Jinx stop to stare at him indignantly. "Not a chance, man. They came here, Not to my hotel. I'm too good at this!: The errant shot shatters the window just as the Brit ducks his head back inside. "And I'm to young to die!" She screeches.

His suggestion to get under the bed makes her roll her eyes, but she doesn't hesitate to dive under it and press herself up against the wall. She squeezes her eyes shut and from inside her backpack, the file is whisked off to the FBI, the NSA and every newspaper in the country in the blink of an eye.

Jinx hears the door slam open and sees the feet of two men in cheap wingtips scuffling with KnightSkye. She closes her eyes and reaches out mentally for any machines in the room. The fridge, no. The oven, useless, a TV, no. The vacuum! With her mind, she turns it on and is rolls out of the closet under its own power, causing one of the gunmen to turn and fire at it, taking him momentarily out of the fight.

As the gunman is turned KnightSkye sticks a thumb in his eye temporarily blinding him he manages to land a few blows but in the confined space they easily overpower him. "The Sat Nav" He shouts into the room as he is hauled from it but the two gun-men never manage to see Jinx.

One of the gunmen bats him with the butt of his gun, knocking him unconscious and hauls his limp body down the stairs, the residents are too scared to intervene. They crudely bind him and throw him in the boot of the car. New York is a mess and scenes like this have become almost ordinary.

KnightSkye wakes up in the boot of the car and is violently sick from his concussion. The car stops and he is hauled out. He is at a huge corporate building. I hope that girl can do something he prays

The two bruisers manage to overpower KnightSkye despite her piddling interference. She clamps a hand over her mouth to keep even her breathing from being heard. Fortunately, the two men weren't looking for anyone other than just a single occupant and they drag him away roughly. Jinx waits only a short time and rushes to the window to get a look at the car's license plate. She'd be able to track it if it had a built in GPS or an Onstar service or an auto theft tacking device. She just hoped the Feds moved against Delacroix before they offed the Brit.

Again, without getting her laptop out, she entered the plate number and set a search. Information was sent to her phone as it came available. Corporate leased vehicle. Diamond 6 Enterprises. "Who the hell is that?" She muttered to herself and kept digging. And then she remembered what KnightSkye had yelled at her. Sat Nav. "His phone!" She crowed as she pounded down the stairs to the street.. Again, her laptop was instructed to trace the GPC chip in KnightSkye's phone, and it showed him heading down town to the financial district.

She hailed a cab and instructed the cabbie to follow the same course. Despite the destruction, he'd managed to avoid the worst of it and soon began to close with the address she'd given him. "Wait, wait! Let me out here." He looked at her in the mirror, oddly concerned. "You sure, kid? Not a good place to be by yourself." Jinx threw a $50.00 at the man, "Call the cops....the Army! Hell! Call Superman!" He tried to protest, but she was gone.

"Eugh" the henchmen removed the sick-covered hero from the boot. "Time to meet the big man" They chuckled. Knight saw no use in resisting so went along with the much stronger duo. The led him up to the top of the pristine skyscraper, which stood out like a sore thumb amongst the surrounding destruction. They eventually stopped dragging him outside a pair of large glass doors. They sat quietly until a cleanly dressed secretary announced that "Mr Delacroix will see you now."

Knight left a nice big smear of blood on the doors as he passed through. Inside the office was a huge departure from the rest of the building, it was like stepping into the 19th century, fur and mahogany were the most prominent features of the room, along with a giant chandelier.

Delacroix himself, despite being reasonably young looked far elder, 35 at least as he sat at his desk his feet up, smoking a cigar. "Well, well, what have we here?" he asked, in a rich eton-educated scrawl, fulfilling his villainous stereotype "Found the turd in the hamper have we? I hear you've been doing a little digging. Good. Get used to it, your going to be doing it until you die." and with that Delacroix let out an evil cackle. "Well, what are you waiting for, take that damned mask off gentlemen..."

Jinx ran to the corner of the only intact building on the block and let her sense reach out and locate security cameras and other security measures within the building. "Holy crap!" Jinx muttered. "What's he expecting?" She suddenly shook her head remembering the war only weeks before. Jinx accessed the security cameras and managed to see the interior view of the building on her phone. She could only see the front office that lead to Delacroix's inner sanctum. She grimaced, "Paranoid much?" She could hear some of the conversation, though.

"Whoa! Not gonna happen, happy boy!" Jinx gritted out when she heard Delacroix order KnightSkye's mask be removed. Accessing the alarm system, Jinx set off the alarms, the sprinkler system and the lockdown all at the same time. But she kept a corridor from the front door to the stairs open for her to get inside. Racing forward, she dove into the building as fast as she could. A guard saw her through his bulletproof barrier, but couldn't override the system to stop her.

Jinx kept moving, making sure no communication got up to Delacroix's office, but that the alarm reached the Fire Department. She took the stairs two at a time, "I efing hate stairs!"

As the Delacroix reaches for the mask KnightSkye bites deep into his index finger, first skin, then bone, then tendons. Delacroix reeles in horror. Knight manages to unreel his hands and wraps the rope around one of the henchman's neck and tightens it until he is blue in the face. The other henchman draws his gun. "Shoot goddamnit!" Delacroix urges.

"I can't" the henchman moans "I can't get a clean shot!"

"Do it!" Delacroix screamed "Or I will!"

He grabs the gun from his henchman. "What? With no trigger finger?" Knight grins as he knocks Delacroix out with one clean punch, grabbing his cigar from the desk and forcing it in one of the henchmen's eye. He screams dramatically and hit the floor.

The other henchman quickly goes to grab the blood-covered but Knight is ahead of him and forces the barrel down before he can shoot... Too late the shot is fired and it goes clean through Knights foot, as he continues to battle for control over the gun Delacroix is stumbling back to his feet...

Racing up the stairs, Jinx hears gunshots over the alarms and ducks reflexively. "Oh crap, oh crap. Don't be dead!" She begs. Finally, she shoots out into the secretary's outer office. The woman is soaked and trying desperately to get a dial tone on her phone. She doesn't look panicked as most women might be when shots are fired nearby. But, then she isn't rushing to her boss' aid either. The blonde looks up to see Jinx and she dropped the phone to reach for a small gun in her desk drawer.

Jinx skidded to a halt and in a panic caused the desktop monitor to short circuit. Electricity sparked from the smoking monitor to the water-soaked woman delivering full amperage and dropping her with a small scream of pain. Jinx's eye widen with shock. "Oh shit! I killed her." Another gunshot jerks Jinx out of her mild panic and she turns toward the glass door to the inner room. A spine-chilling scream jolts Jinx out of her hesitation and she jerks the door open on a riotous scene. Everyone in the room was injured but only one seemed to be down.

Jinx looked from KnightSkye to Delacroix who was bleeding from a hand he clutched against his chest. The finishes in the room were slowly being ruined by the deluge of water. Jinx watched Delacroix reach for a gun on the floor and she accessed the speakers in the room to cause a feedback loop of a piercing shriek right next to Delacroix's head. The man dropped to his knees clutching his head and Jinx raced forward, swinging her heavy backpack like a pro baseball player. It connected with the businessman's jaw with a sickening thud, laying him out.

Knight wins his battle with the gunman and throws the gun out of the window choking the man until he is laid on the floor with his two compatriots. Footsteps can be heard as more of Delacroix's men head toward the room. Knight grabs Delacroix's laptop off his desk and asks Jinx for her rucksack, throwing the laptop in and releasing the straps all the way until they become loose, wrapping them through a drainpipe and reattaching them so it is possible to abseil down the drainpipe. "You go first" he urges Jinx, he takes off his own jacket so that he can work a similar mechanism after the has descended.

Jinx hyperventilates slightly when KnightSkye finally downs the last thug in an Armani suit. She blinks at him when he asks for her Hello Kitty backpack and her ruined laptop, but she hands it over. Hearing more of Delacroix's security pounding toward them, she holds out her hand and locks the door across the room. "Is it bullet proof?" She asks worriedly. She turns to look at the Brit when he doesn't answer right away and sees him beckoning her to the window.

She moved to stand next to KnightSkye and peered out the window to the street 15 stories below. Jinx's eyes flash back to the man, "Are you nuts??! I can't...and you can't..." Heavy thuds against the locked door to the office convinces Jinx otherwise. "Oh my god...if I die you are in SO much trouble!" She slithered out the window and muttering dire punishments on KnightSkye's head, she begins to inch her was down the side of the building.

Knight follows Jinx out of the window and slowly down the side of the building, still unless one of the thugs looked out of the window and directly down they were hidden for now. As they are descending a torrent of sirens heads towards the building as the police and FBI arrive, the unlikely duo reach the bottom of the drainpipe. By now Knight's foot is leaking pretty drastically and he needs urgent medical attention, still a trip to the hospital dressed like this would expose his alter-ego. "Better find a safe-house. You know somewhere we can go until this all blows over?" he asks.

Knight takes the shoelace from the one shoe he still has on and wraps it tightly round his ankle to quell the blood-flow, and slumps on the pavement. "Well today has been exciting" He chuckles, high with deliria.

Jinx had to admit, the sound of all those sirens was actually a comfort. They pair finally got to the ground with only a few slips on her part and a skinned knee. KnightSkye on the other hand was bleeding from the gunshot wound in his foot and the beating he'd taken. Jinx sits next to KnightSkye to catch her breath while he tries to stem the blood flow and she does her best to think where she can take the man. She can't take him back to her hotel. The chance that some staff would see him was pretty high.

She looks at him oddly when he laughs slightly. He needed medical care as soon as possible. Jinx climbed to her feet and tugged on the big man's arm. "Come on, we're gonna be seen if we don't move." She managed to coax the man down an alley and they gradually emerged two blocks away. Jinx hailed a cab and gave an address outside the city proper. That done, she concentrated on her phone for a time and after several minutes, she was satisfied that all the security footage at Delacroix's office building was completely scramble and soaked from the sprinklers.

That done, she made another call. "Um...Mom?" She began, "Don't freak out, OK?" Her parent's house was the safest place she could think of and her Dad could treat NightSkye's foot. And her parents were totally going to lose it.

Because Knight_Guarder has left this topic at a stand still, s/he is not eligible for XP.

However, DigitalMuse may gather her XP from this topic.