OPERATION SEXY MARIO: CONCLUSION

[initiates]

Date & Time: Sept 19th
Location: The UE Holding Compound, and surrounding area.
Characters: Anyone being rescued, doing the rescuing, or doing the distracting.
Summary: There have been some slackers freeloading off the UE for the past couple weeks or so, so let's go drag them home.
Warnings: Likely violence! Let a mod know if we should update this.

Those meant for distraction and those meant for rescue alike are both loaded onto the same stolen highspeed train. It's a great distance to cover, but the train manages in just under two hours, and deposits both groups three miles from the Holding Compound — a desolate and cold area, with rocky, uneven ground, small but jagged hills well-scattered and covered in scraggly trees — and there they part ways.

The diversion is sent away north, to draw United Earth attention and aggression upward, further into the continent, while the rescue team takes a much slower and quieter route to approach the Compound from the south, closest to Exsilium. The rescue team's orders are to wait a full half hour, to be sure that all forces who can be drawn out of the Compound to meet the sudden onslaught from the north will have already left.

The diversion team won't have an easy job of it. The soldiers are heavily armed, and trained to fight to the death before they surrender. They're grouped in organized squadrons, about 20 in each, and seem to outnumber Transports by three to one. Scattered throughout these soldiers are the Masked, the UE's special forces. These soldiers strike with a deadly precision, enhanced speed and strength, and highly advanced weaponry. Also, oddly enough, they seem to have a few smaller members among them, standing about 4 feet tall, and wielding strange powers… Those familiar with the powers of their kidnapped friends may see distinct similarities.

The Compound itself, when the rescue team makes their way in, will be very quiet. All prisoners had been forced into locked rooms (together or separately — whatever was most convenient) before the soldiers had left to face the encroaching threat. There are still personnel left to man the base, of course, and a few of them are armed soldiers — but for the most part it's scientists and researchers. Careful, though. Even scientists and researchers are perfectly capable of sounding the alarm to bring back the armed threats.

Once everyone is out of the Compound, the train will begin running a return trip. It will be kept as long as possible, while the distraction teams sneak back from the battlefield in small groups, but it can't wait forever. Those on the battlefield for the longest, the hardest hitters or the most dedicated fighters, might just have to find another way home. So… any Transports with relocation abilities feel like lending a hand?

Comments

[anklets]

[ and a sharp look slanted at Oz in turn ]

[retraced]

[You don't get a say in it! is what he wants to yell back. But that's not right; Oz definitely has a say in it, but he also knows that Oz is in no state to fight, no matter how much he might want to. They're all powerless here, but Gilbert without his Chain is still more useful in a fight than Oz without his Chain.]

There's no other choice. Get to the train and I'll only be a few minutes behind the both of you.

[He stops himself short and then adds:]

Please...just allow me another ten minutes.

[velveteened]

( out of all of that, the only thing that pulls him up short is the request for time, the deliberate callback to isla yura's mansion and how they'd had to separate there too. but this isn't the same at all, not even close — rather than i can finally fight by your side it's having to flee to safety and leaving the work to gil and everyone else.

but that's another callback too, isn't it, to a memory from this place: it's times like this that you should depend on me to do the things that you're unable to do.

with an effort, he makes himself calm down and breathe out, and then fixes gilbert with a hard look. )

Half an hour. ( possibly ridiculous for an operation of this scale, but at least less so than ten minutes. ) But not any longer.

( though they both know he's hardly going to be counting, not really. )

[anklets]

[This is a familiar exchange, she wishes it didn't remind her so vividly of time constraints gone past, well past, and the waiting which comes after. Long nothings. Her shoulders tense, which is something not easily noted given how she holds the rest of herself.]

Don't be late, Gilbert.

[retraced]

[For all his hubris, ever second that it becomes clear that he needs to leave Oz's side again, he's becoming more and more anxious. He knows he won't be able to breathe properly until he's returned, and a half an hour sounds like an measurement that 'eternity' could fit inside of. But the fact that Lenalee is here, a friend whom Oz trusts and therefore Gilbert trusts, it helps him to stand now, let his hands drop back away from his young master and start for the door.]

I won't be. I promise.

[velveteened]

( i promise, he says, and then there were two. oz doesn't feel vulnerable, exactly, not with lenalee here and gil and break not far (not so far as they've been, particularly) and the promise of others, but where he stands now has been very clearly established.

this is a rescue operation, and the only part he has to play is to be rescued.

gil had said that there's a train waiting, three miles away, but not the particulars; so it's after scarcely a beat that he's turning to lenalee. )

I don't know where the exit is. ( the one everyone must've made, at least, because he doubts they came in quietly; though the location of the one for the ue personnel is also a mystery none of the captives ever managed to crack. he says it with a slight headshake and a level tone, purely questioning, you're going to have to show me going unsaid. then — ) Which direction is the train?

[anklets]

[Conversely, every inch of her is a quivering target, she's just waiting for the bullets to turn and sink into the bulls-eye on her back. They can't just walk away from this so easily, can they? Rescues have never gone so easily before, even if her fingernails are still crusted with blood (not her blood) and her palms and knees are raw-rubbed.

If he lets her, she curls fingers in his sleeve again, and there she plans for them to stay until she's pushed him through the train doors and has no other choice but to release him.]

There's a diversion group, so we can leave through the main entryway. [ starts pulling, they've run up on their allotted dallying time for the day ] But they can't hold out forever, so we can't be slow about it. This way. The train is south of us.

[velveteened]

( he's listening closely for the click of the door behind gil, the receding clatter of his footsteps. it makes him especially disinclined to pull away when she reaches for him, though he wouldn't have done otherwise; the lifeline is something he'll be clinging to as well, if less literally, even if the tug makes his clothes rub uncomfortably against the sore places he's been trying to keep hidden. )

A div — okay.

( swallows down protestations as he follows her lead, heart starting to accelerate as they cross the doorway. he's thinking the same thing she is, that the really difficult part's only just begun, that the united earth won't be so charitable about losing its captives or towards those trying to free them. )

[anklets]

[Then the time for conversation is passed, and the only sound from her from here on out is quiet quiet terse breathing. She needn't make a sound when moments like these call for it, and that has nothing to do with her Innocence, it's all her.

Same for how quickly she can move when time presses hotly on her back; her strides are so long now, and she is skipping over blood and bodies (sometimes parts of bodies) without looking at them (this is forced, tight-lipped, lest her stomach empty itself), and his urgency becomes her urgency becomes his urgency again. Move, move quickly, her mantra, until she's nearly running as she guides him. More than once a face familiar from the train in slips by in her peripheral, making her heart jump.

Left, right, dead ahead: and each corner has her fretting a little more for Oz and Allen and everyone. Are those sounds coming closer or from further off?]

[velveteened]

( their strides aren't so different in length, less than they were once, but it still seems hard to keep up — at first, but then he's more familiar with the place than she is and confidence pushes him forward. the bodies and the blood and parts remind him of sablier only with more familiar (hated) faces, but did he ever want them dead; and that time too, the first time, he was chasing after something — after alice, after the sunlight, in hopes of saving her which they did but only after

no

no need to compound the horror if this situation with (more) memories, making it into the abyss and now sablier, making more things to weigh him down when they need to be quick about it.

the sounds are coming closer, closer, closer, and the corner is rounded by all too familiar uniforms. )

1/2

[anklets]

[ shit shit god damn shit ]

[anklets]

[--pinwheels, and her grip on him is such that, while not easy, it's possible--]

Duck your head!

[--to twist him and put herself between, a split-second movement wherein holy weaponry need not apply (because it's still dead at her feet, she's just checked), and by the hands suddenly very intimate with his hips, Lenalee may or may not have very genuine intent to carry him, but what she ends up doing is pushing him, hard, because extra momentum is all she can offer, and gunshots are far less likely to hit a moving target, she knows his, so move, Oz, move--]

[velveteened]

( he doesn't get so far as saying no, but it almost breaches his lips; he doesn't want her between himself and danger when it's not her they want alive. but there's not much of an option besides to follow her momentum and stumble in the direction he's pushed, hands coming up to reach for her forearms whether to stop her or just hang onto something — 

it's all a blur of movement, so much so that he doesn't even immediately hear the report of the weapon or feel anything at all, even notice the way his sleeve starts to dampen. it's a missed shot, of course, aimed at the interloper; the ue soldier has every intent of keeping their country's captives fairly whole and alive while there's still so much information to be extracted out of them. but firing again at such close quarters is foolish, so he (or she, or who knows, they're all clones aren't they) closes in this time. )

i was going to make this serious and dramatic but then i

[anklets]

Duck your head, I said!

[Words ripped from her throat in a panic, meant to disguise the panic, but it's all in her stomach and so it comes up on her tongue just the same, because she heard the shot and felt it, too, knows intimately the sizzle of air which means a near-miss, at least to her person--

and just like that, he's up and in her arms, cradled as a child, and it's time to book it.]

good!!!!

[velveteened]

( he feels that blood now, but even without looking he's reasonably sure it's minor — it's a pain that's still almost drowned out in the moment, he can move his arm, and has frankly known worse — so the flinch as she sweeps him up isn't from that at all; it's from bruises and bits (little marks of shots and of samples provided, more recent familiarity with less well-meaning hands) as her palms brush over them ungently and pull him towards her.

(can hope she assumes it's from this, though)

and next is bewilderment at her choice of action, at being carried off like this, and he's always known her strong but had clearly made some accidental underestimations here. )

— sorry.

[anklets]

[This is nothing. Her comrades are all dumb, lanky boys who outweigh her (if only just barely). With circumstances like that, a girl's gotta learn how to heft some body mass around, and if she's apologetic over whatever caused such a visceral flinch (she is), it, too, is drowned out in the moment.

And she's fast, but not that fast, so even as she veers left down a different corridor (carving out a new path), the footsteps behind her work to catch up. Fear makes it a bumpy ride. Sorry about that.]

Oz, if I tell you to run, I need you to--

[velveteened]

( he can hear the footsteps too, twists in a way that may make it a little less easy to keep on holding onto him in hopes of seeing or — in hopes of something, at least. bumps are a trivial matter next to that. )

— so you can distract them as I get away? Of course not!

( may not be the door she means but thankfully there is a door coming up before them in a manner of speaking; more a large hole broken from some blast or another (best not to dwell on it perhaps) that's knocked away the better part of a wall. outside is the fresher air than ought to belong in a place like this, even if it's cold, and imperceptibly some feet beyond the compound is the end of the power nulls. )

[anklets]

[Fingers almost painfully pressing in to him, without Jerry's mother-henning her limbs have become even leaner than usual-- such a far cry from a woman's soft curves-- but at least she has wiry strength on her side, keeping him held to her even as he insists on being a stubborn little shit.]

I'm not arguing with you on this! If I say run, then--

[--run. A grunt as the floor behind her heels bursts beneath gunfire meant to cripple, not kill. Lenalee nearly throws him from her arms, refrains only in the hope that bodyshots won't come so easily if she's holding something precious to them close to her chest; it isn't as simple as merely clearing the null-- she isn't even sure where that designation lay, but she daren't lead these people back to Jesse, who gave her such sweet words of protection and care.

Clipping through the opening (that hadn't been there earlier, she's sure), a grace beget from the significantly less graceful scenario of being flung into rubble so often back home, she takes them into open air which she cannot ride, and all around them are other resuers and rescuees and this is less than ideal.]

1/3

[velveteened]

( fingers are pressing in painfully, but he's already tense along his length from worry and everything else, so perhaps it's not obvious; the time to complain isn't now, not with everything else happening. it's just as well that she doesn't let go of him for all that he'd know what to do if she did, but it wouldn't be what she wants. the opening is a relief at least, getting as far as the open air and in the vicinity of others on their side. he's no idea how far the power nulls extend, and the reach for b. rabbit isn't out of anything but instinct. it's been days of the same, trying to grasp for a power pushed just out of reach just in case the ue might actually have a weakness after all —

and then, all at once, there's the long-awaited response. )

[velveteened]

( — and the next shots in their direction are deflected by the newly materialized chains whirling around the both of them protectively as moons around a planet, and from the boy in her arms drips a darkly powerful aura, and b. rabbit is controlled this time. he's not lost to the calls of destruction ringing in his ears now but they are loud after days upon days of forced into helplessness by this technology of the ue's; and the chains that lash behind them to stop their pursuit and turn it all to dust. it's not subtle, and it's not meant to be, because look at what you've wrought for yourself, united earth.

he really is in control, because if he weren't there'd be more than just a warning in their wake. )

[velveteened]

( but that's really enough, and the very last thing he wants to do is deal with his incuse progressing further because of a lapse at a time like this. he's hardly invoked more than a few seconds by the time his eyes are fading back to green, and he's opening his mouth to speak when what comes out is the sound of a caught breath, somewhere between startled and pained.

b. rabbit is a powerful chain, is unequivocally accepted to be extremely powerful to the point that most baskervilles won't even dare engage him if he's invoked. it's so powerfully destructive that its abyssmal influence is enough to tear apart the contractor's own body, and that's why early on gil had sealed the power with raven. that's proven since unneeded, and the progression of his incuse itself has been a tangible reminder of the way an illegal contractor's physical being is altered to accommodate the contract. the last few progressions, once painful enough to knock him unconscious, had gone all but unnoticed.

which is why it's a surprise when now he feels the pain like a physical blow, abrupt and blinding, enough to make him curl further in lenalee's arms in an instinctive response. there's been worse, there has, but it's so utterly unexpected that he can't help it — and horrifying because this isn't normal, because there has to have been tampering after all and what did they do? )

[anklets]

—Oz?

[This, a yelp, for this is not the first she has been surrounded by enemy and chains, nor the first that she's seen(/felt) this power come off him in slow heavy pulses; her grip had been over-strong, and now it is doubled, as though she could take that half-pained noise into herself if she only held him tightly enough.

But it's ended before her dismay has even fully set in, and while she daren't look behind her, she has a feeling, and slows her heels.]

What's wrong?

[velveteened]

They did something.

( breathed out perhaps unwisely when he's still trying to catch his breath, but it's the only conclusion he can come to. there was something besides the power nulls, something in their poking and prodding and testing and injecting, because there's no reason, none at all, that he can think of as to why invoking so briefly should cause something like this. there may or may not be a hand that curls into the fabric of one of her sleeves for steadiness, an echo of her earlier gesture. )

They must have, this isn't supposed to —

1/2

[anklets]

[ don't. ]

[anklets]

[It has been so long since Suman, so long since the young boy before him. But now, even now, they are where her mind first darts to, to gather up powdery fear like dust beneath a sweeping fingertip.

They did something, where they have been faces both cruel and closer to home.

Without meaning for it, Lenalee's eyes brim.]

Don't. Don't do anything. We'll fix this.