"Hngh!"

The man (or whatever he was) standing on the table buckled to one knee. Sure enough, this did put him within grasping range, but he was apparently a trained fighter of some sort. Jack would find that the hand she reached with was deftly backhanded to one side, then—

*Fwoof!*

He actually didn't counterattack. His cloak rustled as he backflipped away under the power of his one uninjured leg and landed behind another worktable. He made an awkward thud as he went down, and ended up on his hip on the floor, but quickly got up and limp-dashed through the dark behind a mess of hanging meat hooks, chains, and burlap sacks.

Sleepytime was seconds away.

Jack and Ember ((and presumably Key, but maybe not if Jeni isn't available to play her)) would soon find themselves stirred awake by a blinking red light in the dark.

They were still in the back of the butcher shop. They were very thoroughly tied up with chain and twine, hanging by their restraints on hooks, but alright—penniless and weaponless, but uninjured and undisturbed.

A contraption sitting on the counter was illuminated only by a solitary red light that blinked on and off periodically. It was a crude sort of machine, with a couple valved gas canisters on it, and it was visibly surrounded by a strange vapor. However, the quiet hiss that it emitted was slowly fading, the vapor dissipating, and, along with it, their drowsiness fading.

Someone apparently went to lengths to ensure that they would stay knocked out for a while, but why, and for how long? A quick look around revealed that it was nighttime, with no daylight coming in through the cracks in the swinging double doors anymore. Strangely, their captors no longer seemed to be around.

Nothing. Her voice echoed around without response, unless one of her cohorts happened to stir.

There was just frustrating silence. It was the kind of thing that could make a claustrophobic person freak out, or a temperamental person get really mad, being strung up like that with no one around, and no way to move...

Oh, but then there was light. It was artificial light, and had that kind of "passing" quality to it, rising up between the cracks in the swinging doors. There was a low rumble along with it. The headlights and motor of a car pulling up, maybe?

No. It got too loud—too bright. All the shelves and chains, everything, it all began to rattle.

The back door slammed open right in front of Jack, and a blinding yellow-white light flooded the room like day. Familiar silhouettes, dark and hooded, walked in, one of them limping. They parted to make way for... a really, really bizarre sight.

A shimmering, golden-orange figure, indistinct in shape, stood around six feet tall. Glittering feathers draped straight off of it, all the way to the floor in a manner that looked more like a robe than a part of its body, completely obscuring its legs in such a way that it seemed to drift forward rather than walk. Its huge upper body had a vaguely birdlike shape to it—not in the way that Jack was bird-like, but more in the way a bulbous, non-sapient pigeon was birdlike. Its head was small,but had a strange, artificial-looking, conical beak, and blank, lens-like eyes, not unlike an old-fashioned doctor's plague mask and goggles.

It stopped in the middle of the room, regarded the trio of girls in silence, then motioned toward them with a long, gleaming-feather-draped arm. The two shorter, darker cloaked figures moved forward at his command, and began taking Jack, Ember, and Key down from where they so neatly hung, preparing to haul them out the back door like sacks of potatoes.

SUDDENLY...

Almost just as the crew of freaky deaky doctors seemed to turn around, a brief, but ear-splitting BOOM burst through the quaint little butcher shop, and with it, enough chunks of the wall behind them to accommodate a large refrigerator spewed violently to the ground. There was another shadowy figure brought to the scene of the crime, and unfortunately for the creepy little robe-people, it was not a large refrigerator.

It was Power Mask.

Granted, recognizing him might've been a little difficult for anyone who knew him, for gone was his manly shirtlessness, sacrificed in favor of an outfit more suited to the bitter weather distinctive of Cape Norden. Save his gloved hands and booted feet, his entire body was hidden by a thick, dusty-looking brown overcoat, buttoned politely to his chest and quite snug in all the right places. On his dome rested a fuzzy little ushanka, and of course, his mask was worn under that.

"NAHT ssso faaahst," he roughly decreed, thrusting a leather-gloved finger in the kidnappers' direction and steeling his body. "Hyour abdocting deis arle comming to an eind!"

And to his credit, for all the theatrics he was pulling, he actually did look pretty pissed.

Alarmed at Tank's wall-smashing, the captors dropped poor Jack and Ember, fell over them, and generally made a mess of things. The bizarre chief abductor was less affected, but nonetheless froze.

There was a sort of uncomfortable silence following the heroes' entrance. The two normally-sized guys in gas masks and hoods picked themselves up uneasily, and stood at ready, very tense. They slowly turned their gaze to their huge leader.

The ceiling caved in. Searing yellow-white light flooded the room, and a burly machine, not unlike some kind of ten-foot-tall liberty bell with feet and a head, left a pair of small craters in the tile floor shaped like its dumpy feet.

It raised a rather intimidating-looking sledgehammer and began to stomp toward the group, cracking the tile with each step. Unfortunately, the two dropped, tied-up ladies were right in its walking path, and it didn't even seem to notice. Ember was going to be the first to get squished if no one acted fast.

Perhaps a bit late to the party, the crimson-clad bunny stepped through the hole made by Tank moments before the ceiling gave way for a big machine to stretch it's legs in the middle of the room. The cave-in made the rabbit jump back a bit.

His eye darted from the hooded figures, to the glittery weirdo... Well, what do you know, that bartender did have reliable intel after all. However, the big bell-looking robot was new.

Unlike a certain civilized baron, Ivan was not above being brash, however. He had no idea how effective, if at all, he would be against something so big and sturdy looking, but nonetheless, he stepped passed Tank and Dureau. He bent his knees and launched himself into the air toward the robot with his powerful legs, twisting in mid-air to deliver a hard kick at the machine's chassis.