NORTHERN MARKETS
Episode 82
Jailbreak

Satharn, Winter 31
4:15 AM
The giant tree housing the CCA’s base had five decks built around it. Each deck went all the way around and were five floors separate from eachother in height. Each deck connected via suspended bridges to platforms on other trees.
It was early Saturday morning, and the bright moonlight seeped its way through the foliage of the giant leaves and flowers of the treetops above.
A group of five guys scampered their way up the bridge to the second deck from the bottom. These guys all used to be in SWAT teams until the JA took out the entire police force.
Chuck stopped them 3/4 of the way and they all hit the wood on their stomachs. He slowly crept up to the end of the bridge and peered over. Two CCA arch mages stood guard, watching the treefort city with narrow eyes. There was a pair of archmage guards at each bridge on the platform. They stood vigilantly, with their staffs up, ready to fry the hell out of anything they percieved as a threat.
“Dam!” Chuck cussed. “There’s guards everywhere!” he whispered. ” Whiskey, you got that sleep potion?”
A scruffy looking guy from SWAT Magic Control slowly belly-crawled. “Right here.” he said, pulling out spray bottles and passing them to the other three guys. The whole 5 man team were dressed in usual clothes rather than their SWAT gear.
“If you want my guess, this stuff’ll knock them out for a good five minutes, and that’s not a lot of time. Each bottle has enough for good sprays, so thats 25 between us. We go together, we can’t split up.” Whiskey explained.
“Why can’t we just use the sapper?” Cheech asked.
“This is not like back home, guy!” Chuck hissed. “We’re simply here to get Rusty and that ranger and split! Karl said no casualties!”
“Aw come on, those are archmages, this thing won’t kill them! I got it set to tap them and make them unable to cast magic, we go in, cheap-shot them, run in, grab those guys and get out!”
“Sapping archmages is an act of war! Sap them, and you will compromise everyone’s safety!” Chuck hissed back.
“The mayor surrendured to the Magic Council in hopes for aid and refuge for all of us here and back in Kerning City. Total unconditional surrender, and we’ve been ordered to stand down while they figure out where to have us fight. You sap those archmages, and that will be it! They will not help our boys back home and they would just as well kill everyone back at camp! They will destroy us all before you know it!” Whiskey fumed.

“Alright, alright!” Cheech retorted. “So why did I have to lug this heavy-ass thing all the way out here then?”
“Life threatening situation.” Chuck answered. “For us, they’ll just nab us and take us in. The ranger, they’ll kill him if they see him escaping! Karl said we have to take him alive no matter what! That sapper is a last resort! Everyone check your weapons?”
All five SWAT men checked their guns. The bullets were made of rubber-coated shock-absorbant metal. They were designed not to pierce the body, but to deliver excruciating pain, thus incapacitating the target and making think they were shot. Good riot control weapons.
Chuck and Whiskey watched the archmages. They weren’t standing right by the bridge so they couldn’t see them.
“The one on the left is F/P, the other is an I/L. Take out the IL first then go for the FP. Stealth up close and make it an
ambush attack. I want them down without the others seeing or hearing it, got it? Soon as they go limb, lower them to the ground, do not let them fall.”
The guys nodded.
“For Kerning!”
“for Kerning!”

They silently dashed up the bridge. Chuck and Cheech were the first on the platform. They pulled down their stolen carnival masks (from the Blue Moon Festival grounds).
Chuck was five feet away from the FP archmage when he stepped on a twig, snapping it.
The FP mage spun around, already spewing poison gas.
“Feach! Namhaid! Tabhair faoi!” The FP screamed!

“NOW!” Chuck shouted. The FP swung her staff hard, Chuck hit the floor barely missing it, and fired his gun.
Cheech jumped up behind the archmage, and put his gun to the back of her neck and fired several time. she hit the floor face first, the staff clattered loudly as it fell.
Check opened fire at the IL.
Whiskey and the other two guys charged, shot and sprayed the mage before he could fire an ice attack. He passed out and went limb. The guys caught him and lowered him to the floor.
“You spray the FP?”
“Y-yeah, I did!”
“Idiots! I thought we went over this!”
“Shut up!” Chuck hissed in chenched teeth. “Shut the hell up!”
The guys dragged the maged behind the shadow of some crates.
They heard running footsteps.
“Here they come!”
The SWAT team hid in the dark as four more mages came running up.
“Oh shyt!” Jack, the rookie cop breathed.
“Hold it!” Whiskey hissed to the team. “Let them get close!”

“Alfo! Slinas! Where are ye?!” the bishop shoted.

“Crap! That guy’s a bishop!” Chuck breathed.
“It’s all the same!” Whiskey whispered.
“All the same my ass! These aren’t your run of the street magicians, this is the fuqking CCA!”
“What’s an archmage going to do when you pound them in the solar plexis?”
“Ok, when they get close, we strike! I’ll take that IL, Cheech, you take the FP, Whiskey, you take the bishop. You two, take the others!”

The mages walked close. “There were gunshots fired here!”
“Careful, could be a trap!”

The mages unwittingly walked too close.
Chuck snapped his finger, and the team charged, guns blazing. Rubber bullets struck the mages in the faces, and then the guys bodychecked them. Whiskey grappled with the Bishop, got behind him, put his pellet gun to the back of the mage’s neck and fired. The mage passed out. The other guys had to spray them.

“Don’t touch the staffs, whatever you do!” Whiskey snapped. “Leave them! You’ll get fried if you touch them!”
“how many sprays was that?”
“I-I sprayed it three times!”
“omg!”
“Whatever, let’s go before they wake up!”

The door opened easily as they entered the base. “Wow, it’s unlocked.”
“Must’ve been changing shifts or something.”
“Okay, where’s the ranger at?”

The team ran down to the detention cell block and ran into a young level 35 wizard.
Whiskey tackled the teenage guy and slammed him into the wall. He held the magician by the throat and put his gun to the guy’s head.
“Where is the ranger?!” he demanded.
The wizard just cried. “Listen, boy, we are not the JA! Show me where the ranger is before I hurt you!”
Whiskey drove his fist into the guy’s stomach. He cried in pain.
“Okay! Okay! I’ll show you! Please don’t kill me!”

At gunpoint, the wizard quietly led the SWAT team down to the cell block.
“The vines locking these doors were fused up by the archmage’s magic. I don’t have enough power to unlock it.” the wizard said.
“Craaap!” Cheech groaned.
“gimme the sappe-Give me the sapper!” Chuck said impatiently. The wizard gasped as he saw the gadget.

The sapper looked like a steel ball with tiny lightbulbs on it. Inside it was a supercharged battery of magic and eletrical energy, along with a magnetic destabilizer device. The sapper emits an electromagnetic pulse that completely destabilizes magic energy. If powerful enough, this magically flavored EMP could even kill a magician.

Chuck took the steel ball. “Numbnuts! Got the key! Let’s go, we’re on a very tight schedule here!”
cheech handed him the key, and chuck unlocked a tiny hatch in the ball. it opened, revealing a small keypad.
“Wizard, how much power will this thing need to unlock the door?”
The wizard shook nervously. “I-I I don’t know…please don’t kill me..”
“We’re not gonna fuqking kill you, will you stop tweaking already?”
“Localize it. Set the range to six inches, and hold it by the lock. Put it at 300 watts.”
“Here goes,” Chuck said, pressing the red button ontop of the ball.
The vines wrapped around the latch shook and rustled, but nothing happened.

The wizard stood far back against the other wall. Cheesecake and Cheech both flanked him with their guns up.
“Why not just blast the lock with, like a thousand watts or something?”
“The mages will detect the pulse from far away if its powerful enough,” the wizard said.
“Even though it dies after going 6 inches out?”
“Yup,”

“700 watts.” Chuck said. “5 inches.”
The vines rustled. Nothing. “Damn piece of crap!”
“just crank it, we’re gonna have company soon!” Whiskey snapped.
Chuck turned the dial all the way up, and hit the button.
The vines shook and glowed bright blue as mana began to ooze out and splatter everywhere. Chuck turned to face away. Hot burning drops of mana hit his face.
Whiskey aimed his gun at the vines and fired.
*SPOOM!*
The vines exploded in a burst of blue sparks. “It’s open!”
The door was yanked open.

Jango Alyth was jilted from sleep and covered his eyes from the blinding light. The guys rushed in and dragged him out.
“Who are you?” Jango asked.
“Shut up, asswipe!” Chuck snarled, pointing his gun right at the ranger’s left eye. “If I wasn’t following orders, I’d kill you right now!”
“Tie him up!”
“No!” Whiskey ordered.
“What?”
“Huh?”
“W.t.f, this guys a JA ranger! We can’t just let him go free!”
“He tries anything,” Whiskey said, pulling out his heavy .45 pistol, and aimed it at the ranger. “I’ll blast his brains out! This gun contains live ammunition, so don’t try anything funny, ranger!”
Jango gulped in fear. Kerning vigilantes!

“Hey! Who’d down there!” a voice shouted. Then footsteps followed, then stoped. The archmages were at the top of the stairs around the corner. Chuck cranked therange dial on the sapper to 20 feet.
“Well, we better get going. Give the Magic Council my regards.” Whiskey said, and sprayed the wizard in the face with the sleep potion. The wizard guy coughed as he slowly buckled over. Whiskey punched him out as hard as he could. The magician flew back and slammed into some shelves, spilling the spellbooks.
“Scaoil!” the archmages shouted.
The stairwell glowed as a giant lightning bolt shot down at the SWAT men!”
“Sap!” Whiskey shouted, and Chuck hit the button. The energy pulse shot outward and blocked the lightning bolt. The lightning bolt exploded in a burst of white and blue sparks. The guys ran like hell the other way.

The archmages were completely bewildered by what had happened, but were now really pissed off.

Rusty got up and walked to the bars of his cell. He heard the noise and wondered what the hell-
“Holy crap its Rusty!”
Whithout words, Chuck localized and fired the sapper ball again, blowing the vines off Rusty’s door.
Rusty opened it, and came out.
“come on!” Whiskey said, handing him his pellet gun. “We are leaving!”
As they ran through the corridor, Rusty was completely puzzled over why the hell he was running in the back of the pack next to the imprisoned ranger!
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Less talk, more run!”
Just as they made it to the door a head, it was kicked opem by a full squad of mages. They all raised their staffs, and prepared to fire. One ice mage fired her freeze attack, but Chuck countered that shot with another sap shot.
“Ahhh! What is that thing?!!” the mage cried in Gaelic.
The archmage jumped over them and landed in front, weilding her fearsome looking modified silver Celestial staff.
“oooh shyt she’s from their elite group!” the ranger gasped.
She stared down the guy with the metal ball.
“Stand down and surrender immediately!” she shouted. “You purebloods won’t stand a chance against raw magic! surrender, and you’ll live!”
“Hah! Don’t bet on it, mage! You ain’t got shyt against SWAT Magic Control!” Whiskey shouted back. “We’re taking the prisoners with us! I know some people who are looking to dispense their revenge and misery against the ranger, and the other guy, well he’s one of us!”

Without another word, the archmage charged up a fire storm that swirrled around her Celestial staff, and then she unleashed her fury!
All 7 guys screamed in panic while Chuck fired the sap.
“Oh crap it aint work-“
And the firestorm closed in on them–

BOOM!
The staff in the mage’s hands exploded like a bomb and she was taken out by the burst of lethal shrapnel!
The flames all exploded into sparks catching the walls ceiling and floor on fire. When the EMP hit the magical fire, a current of magic-electric energy travelled along the flames to the staff, and set off the magic batteries inside it.
They heard voices from jail cells below. “Hey! Let us out! We’re down here!”
The ranger rushed over to a crack in the floor. “Hank, Hartly? Is that you?”
“Alyth, you traitor! What theh ell you doing?! Get us outta here…!”

“Fire!” Whiskey ordered, and they all (except Jango) opened fire with their pellet guns.
The terrified level 7X-8X mages were scared, but did their best and fired ice, fire, gas and lightning at them.
“Sap them again!” Whiskey shouted.
“Hey, I thought you said-“
“Just bloody sap them! Put it at 70 watts! fire!”
Chuck turned the dials and pulsed again! The mages’ attacks all died. They tried to make more, but couldn’t-
“CHARGE!” Whiskey shouted, as he bolted up to the IL mage infront, and delivered a harsh knee kick to the guy’s solar plexis (right above stomach). The mage buckled over as the rest of the SWAT team and prisoners did the same and sprayed them.
Whiskey lifted his mask for some air. “Let’s go!”

[“Foglai rabhadh! Foglai rabhadh! Intruders on Level 2! Intruders on Level Num! They are armed and dangerous! All archmages are to fight!”] echoed off the sound crystals all over the place.

Captain Ylin Arla woke up from her sleep, cussing in Gaelic. She was only level 91, but she still quickly threw on her CCA robes and grabbed her staff, and rushed out of her room. She knew it! the JA would be here! she thought. she ran down the staircase and followed the other mages- An archmage guy grabbed her by the shirt and pulled her back.
“Aye, what gives?!” she demanded.
“They got a sapper! They’ll kill you with it!” the guy shouted.
Arla ran out onto the platform in the cold night air and looked down on the deck below.

The latch on the heavy oak door exploded, and the door was pushed open.
“Go, go go!” Chuck shouted as the 7 of them ran out-
–into a mob of super pissed off archmages of the CCA’s 7E Foireann!

“oooooh shyt. This doesn’t look very healthy…” Whiskey mused.

The archmages fired up their staffs right when the ranger came out of the door.
“IONSAIGH!” the commander archmage shouted. Attack!
Whiskey grabbed the ball from Chuck and cranked the range and power. He had a flashback of his family back home in KErning City, and how the CCA ambushed his neighborhood, killing them. only he survived that attack eight years ago. “This one’s for you, Amy!” he snarled, and jammed his finger on the button.

The pulse was so powerful it caused the energy the 7E-F mages cast to explode violently. As sparks exploded everywhere, the pulse hit the mages, taking them all out!!! Some of their staffs exploded, pumping a few mages full of metal shrapnel!
As the pulse expanded outward, it set off barrels full of mana fuel and magic substances inside the base. The entire storage section exploded in a bright-as-hell-blast that lit up the whole town.

The energy pulse shot upward and Ylin instinctively jump just as te pulse passed her and died. She suddenly felt completely drained and collapsed.

The fires started by the explosions raged with all their fury.
Whiskey laughed loudly. “hahahaha! That’s what you get!”
“What???” Chuck asked bewildered.
Whiskey walked back to the giant tree and found that some of the explosions blew a hole in the wall to the prisoner cells inside. the Justice Arrow rangers inside called for help.
“Jango! We’re in here!”
Jango looked up at them and gave them the finger.
“You traitor!” they shouted.
Whiskey smashed the ball on the hard wood ground, breaking it.
“What the hell was that for?!” Chuck shouted.
But Whiskey ignored him, and threw the busted sapper as hard as he could at the hole in the wall, and the barely visible bowman in the jail cell inside. The ball smashed through the hole in the wall, and bashed the bowman’s face, knocking him out.

“Let’s go! We are leaving!”

They disappeared into the night, dashing quietly along the bridges and platforms. Arla followed them closely.

5:00 AM
As magicians rushed to the burning tree to extinguish the fire with their ice magic, the low level commonors or civillian magicians all stood around out front of their homes woken up by the commotion outside. The SWAT team quickly disappeared into the crowd, and all threw their masks and costumes over the rails.
The handcarved wooden masks and woven costumes for the festival fell away into the magic swamp below.

Arla tried to keep up, but lost them as she pushed and shoved her way through the crowded streets.
“Are we under attack?”
“Is it the JA?”
“Impossible!”
People sounded really worried. Arla dismissed the concern. Even though that internal attack happened, there was no way for the JA to actually launch an attack here. The archmages would annihilate them all!

She found the ranger standing among a crowd of Kerning people near the refugee camp, and bolted forward-

A chief bandit came out of nowhere and broke his stealth behind her. In a split second, he charged at her, and clamped her in a powerful choke hold. Arla dropped her staff as she tried to tear the CB’s beefy hands off.
“I wouldn’t do that, mage,” he hissed. putting a sharp double jagged dagger to her throat.
Arla gasped, but no air was coming in! Tears streamed out of her eyes. This was it!
The people looking away just turn around, and they’d see she was being strangled. She wanted to cast an energy bolt at the man, but she couldn’t produce magic! She remembered she had been sapped by that-

“So, what’s it going to be, mage? Will you surrender, or will you die?!” he tightened his hold on her neck and brought the dagger right to her throat! Arla turned blue as she desperately waved her free arm. He loosed up a little.
“I-I surrender!” she choked.
“Good girl.” the CB said, releasing her. Arla buckled over to her hands and knees coughing and gasping for air. Sweat dripped down her face. The bandit stood over her; a black shadow blocking the light from the street lanterns from reaching her.
“What do you want with me?” she cried.
The CB grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to her feet. His evil eyes pierced her mind as she looked at his face.
“Revenge! You mages destroyed me! You destroyed everything I had, and the people I knew!”
“Don’t take it all out on me! I’m just a-“
The CB threw her down. “That’s not what I want! Those guys you were following did the job for me! Magnificant explosion, wouldn’t you say?”
Arla looked at the monster of a man in fear. “That was for revenge….?”
“Na, it was a sneak job to get that ranger! And you almost ruined that! Why must you mages interfere with our quest of vengence with your war mongering?!!!!”
“Warmong-“
The CB grabbed her by the throat again. “Enough talk. We should be going!” And he dragged the sapped mage off.
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more to come stay tuned!!!