Ed did his best to peer through the smoke from his spot on the ground. He’d sort of shimmied up next to the pillar to maybe protect at least one of his sides but now that he got a bit of a better look at the place it was probably pointless.

The force field looking thing shimmered around them and Ed swore he saw what he was pretty sure were bullets stuck in it, like maybe pellets slowly sinking towards them in molasses.

Yeah, Ed scrambled to feet, those were definitely bullets. As the smoke started to clear he could hear the crackle of gunfire and what appeared to be maybe a dozen swat teams, on pretty much every floor of the atrium casually firing at them from behind lines of sandbags and riot shields. Woah! He almost caught himself on the pillar again as the smoke finally cleared from the ground floor. There was even a giant armored truck somehow squashed into the largest of the exits.

“This, is politics?” Ed managed to squeak out incredulously. His back was still to the pillar, and despite doing his absolute best to stay still he would still sometimes inadvertently flinch at the scattered gunfire.

“They can’t actually see us.” Mr. Garry seemed to squint outside the barrier. Ed noticed in at least somewhat relief that there was a distinct lack of pedestrians. “At least I don’t think they can. But yeah,” He started muttering again, placing his hands on the floor, except this time the shadows outside the bubble began to bubble and writhe before sort of sputtering out a bunch of what Ed could really only describe as Mr. Garry clones.

They started almost immediately stumbling in random directions and the gunfire was very quick to follow them.

“Catholics, Shintoists,” His eyes ran through the various squads. “Pretty sure that’s some Crows there too… Though, I guess the real question’s why they’re on this side of the mountains.” Though he seemed to say that last part more to himself than anything else.

“How’d you know that?” Ed said before he could stop himself. While on closer inspection whatever their uniforms were they definitely weren’t police, between the dark kevlar and visored helmets, Ed was having a hard time even discerning them from even each other as they shuffled behind their sandbags.

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“Truck’s got a logo, the ones on that bridge are using uncirculated obfuscation talismans, then finally you’ve got miss stringles up by the, uh, what do they call em again? Tacas? Tacos? I know it starts with a T.”

“Tacos.” Somewhat hesitantly, Ed looked to where he’d pointed and almost tripped again at the sight of the trenchcoat guy, standing rather ominously over the little habit girl as she appeared to systematically dig into a large pile of tacos.

“Yeah, that taco vendor over there. See, as the primary Mem officer of the Oregon territory, if they get a bullet in me, the current, if rather tense sort of balance we got going on would probably tip in their favor.”

Mr. Garry wiped his brow. Ed noticed he seemed to be sweating quite a bit now.

“Wait wait,” Ed shook his head. “Hold up a minute. Is it my fault these guys are here?”

“Well…” Mr. Garry seemed to crack a bit of a smile at that. “Uh, no? Probably?”

“Probably?!”

Mr. Garry looked to the sides again. Snapping off what appeared to be a very clunky looking metal cube from a cord on his neck. “This isn’t exactly the best time for a history lesson but the short story’s the Crows got their grubby little claws into one of the most powerful oracles ever born this side of the veil and have been kind of mucking things up for everyone for a good fifty years now.”

He slid the cube over one of the tables between them and Ed hastily caught it after a small fumble. He frowned. “What’s this?” He figured between the forcefield, the clones, and the fact Mr. Garry hadn’t immediately left him here, that he should probably trust him. Well; that and the fact he was not seeing a single way out of a field of gunfire without some seriously magical, well, magic.

Mr. Garry tapped the edge of the bubble. “Flip it over. See the little switch?”

Ed did indeed see the little switch. It was tucked between what Ed was hesitant to say was an exposed gear and a small panel of buttons.

“Right now it’s on, flip it off, not right now please, and—” Mr. Garry tapped a bit of the bubble next to them. “—Our little bubble goes down. It’s centered around the cube at each deployment. It’s currently set to about a 10 meter radius. Roy will kill me if I change any of the settings so I’m gonna have to ask you to not mess with any of that other stuff on it. Yeah?”

Ed blinked. “You want me to run out there.”

“Nice, could you drop it on my count? Then break for an exit, their sense of direction is about to be flipped, in like maybe ten seconds?”