After some tertiary planning for the next day's run into Somervell, the team returns to their homes for sleep, some more fitful than others. Despite the hour, and how tired she knows that she should be, The Phoenix turns in bed a few times before standing, laying out her weapons, and going through her katas. Finally, blessedly, sleep does find her, though when she wakes in the morning, first at two, then at three-thirty, and again at eight, nine-fifteen, and nine-forty-five, she feels like hammered drek. It's nothing a little time and some soykaf won't fix, but it's well after two when she makes her rounds in the Shin-Hyung to pick up her compatriots and head into the Somervell sprawl.
Mr. Hopeless is surprisingly fresh-faced, the past night proving cooler than average, which made his apartment almost bearable. Even the taxing summoning from the morning has been rested off, and Salsha didn't appear the least bit troubled to accompany him again, rising back from the astral plane with a mischievous glint to her eyes. In the car, he takes his now normal spot in the back seat, peering out the windows to get a sense of the astal presence around them. In the meat world, the sky is gray and overcast, and light cool winds bathe the interior of the car, as Wraith updates the team on her intel gathering from the previous night.
The Phoenix steers south off the 377, and goes south a few miles before they begin trawling the streets in earnest. They're still a few miles from the sprawl's epicenter, still far enough out to be able to drive. Rows of identical gray pre-fab apartments line the streets, and a surprising number of now defunct Mexican flags litter the roadway and sidewalks, a few still flying defiantly from third and fourth floor windows. The driver is the first to discern any Feathered calling cards. Turning down a street she couldn't hope to pronounce, The Phoenix sees a pair of jaguars, one stream of fire, another of water, issuing from their mouths painted on the sides of buildings in typical Aztec style. Wraith sees similar, and fairly well-rendered AROs of the same, and she also notes how clear they are despite the general state of disrepair in the matrix out here.
The streets are mostly bare, with the occasional pedestrian, but to the eyes of the groups, they seem like noncombatants. The Shin-Hyung inches past two burned out cars set perpendicular in the street, and notes another vehicle behind it that looks to be in working order. La Sombre notes the bullet holes in the cars, and the scorching across the hood. Looks like they've seen better days for sure. Through Hopeless' open window, the team can hear an agitated crowd up ahead, maybe two or three blocks over.
