Jauhung shrugs. "Good enough for me," he says, then looks at Ariel to see what she's thinking.

"Nightjar, huh?" she says, after some squinting. "Same Nightjar with the hot takes about old Broadway shows in the runner forums?"

"Is our location known? To whoever wants to kill Raymond, I mean."

"We hope not. We had to physically tail you after you turned off your connection - thank you for that, by the way - and we took out the cameras in Golden Flower and three other tearooms across the district an hour before he sat down."

"Alright. Let's go, then." He wanted to shoot Zyu Hoi a message explaining that he'd be away for who knows how long and Zyu Hoi might need to find a replacement at the restaurant but he supposes that'll need to be later.

Forward. Ehonté and Nightjar take the lead; Plastique and the elf cover the rear. The siblings are sandwiched. They come up to door of the Golden Flower. The interior looks serene, through lightly tinted plate glass. There's an incense vaporizer, to lend some depth to the clouds of flowery steam inherent to a teahouse. The walls are lacquered red and gold, peeling only slightly with age.

There's a quiet thump behind them.

What now.

He turns to look.

The elf is on the ground. He's not visibly injured, but the blood is flowing from the back of his head like wine from an open bottle.

Plastique is already moving fluidly towards Nightjar. Her fingers have blossomed into knives.

Ehonté swears, grabs Jauhung and Ariel by the hands, and tries to pull them away from the melee.

Ariel isn't leaving. She flings an acid bolt at Plastique -

who takes it across the face and doesn't seem to even notice. The skin melts away, revealing steel-hard ceramics underneath as she begins fighting Nightjar in earnest. He's got two feet on her, and he's swinging around a sword that looks like it probably cost fifty thousand nuyen.

She's winning.

Ariel is no longer as committed to not leaving.

So much for that. He is more than happy to be led, he is no good in a fight against someone who doesn't suck.

Ehonté leads them down a blind alley, up a fire escape, through the hallways of an apartment complex, up to roof level, across a plank bridge, down into the basement of the building they end up on top of, and into a neighborhood maintenance/smuggling tunnel from there. He's not making them run, but he's not slowing down.

"I had a bulletproof getaway plan," he says tightly. "Unfortunately, she knew about it. Because she was on the team. So if either of you has a suggestion about where to go next, I'd love to hear it."

"D'you think they know about Wo's places? If the group finds out I brought outsiders with me they might kill me but they don't need to find out."

"...no, she'd have no reason to suspect any connection to the Wo group... and we could petition them for ongoing shelter while we figure out what to do. I like it. Any boltholes nearby?"

"Yes. ...I think. I got turned around." He brings up the offline map. "Whereabouts are we?"

"22.301150093477247, 114.17626663558224."

(He doesn't pronounce all of the numbers out loud with his mouth. He pings Jauhung with them. The actual words he says are "22-114.")

Jauhung lifts an eyebrow but, sure, he can find them. "Yeah I know a place. Let's go."

They go. Ariel looks like she is pretty done with this fucking day.

He was done with this fucking day the moment that one gate turned out to be locked, honestly.

Once they're outside, he leads them through a couple of alleys and then into an abandoned building and out the other side and into another abandoned building and downstairs into a basement that's sufficiently dusty it looks like it hasn't seen any visitors in years. There's a large painting, ripped in places and mostly faded away, leaning against the wall in a corner; Jauhung drags it to the side—it slides a lot more easily than it looks like it ought to—and places a hand on a little metal door behind it that looks looks rusted shut and resembles a dumbwaiter but there's a beep at his touch and it opens easily.

"Not good for trolls and most orks but you should fit alright," he says to Ariel, then he crawls in.

"Yeah, laugh it up, twink." Ariel clambers in after him; it's not like she's not twinky, for her reference class.

Ehonté is too, and his reference class is substantially smaller. He could fit in a regular dumbwaiter. Though he's glad not to need to.

The place is reasonably spacious, but lightly furnished, meant to hold some ten people comfortably and thirty cramped. There are a couple of terminals next to a wall, both unplugged, and a couple of sofas and a table and a little kitchenette, and that's it. You're meant to hide here, and not die of boredom if possible, but the "not die" part is the more important one.

When they emerge into it he's already turned the lights on and is making his way to the kitchenette to see if he can find something to get drunk with.

Ehonté gets there before him - those little legs can move. He picks up a bottle of plum liquor and looks it over. "Hm. Lower-proof than I'd prefer, honestly."

"Mm." Is there anything higher-proof than that? He's only been here once before. Eh, whatever, booze is booze. He grabs a different bottle than the one Ehonté did and walks over to the sofa then flops onto it. He reaches inside one of his coat's pockets and grabs his pack of cigs. If he has smokes and booze, everything will be alright, or at least a little bit less bad.

"Man, I heard dwarves drink hard but you've gotta weigh like fifteen pounds."

"What? -oh." He retrieves a hand towel and soaks it in brandy. "No, that's stupid. I'm cleaning Jauhung's injuries because otherwise he's going to let himself get a fatal blood infection."

He sets about this task.