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]

[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.

[velveteened]

( fix this, she says, which hardly seems a comfort when he doesn't even know what's been done. it's a conclusion he's leapt to — and how can he fail to, after the last few days? after knowing precisely what the ue was trying to do? knowing all of that the whole time had made the experience suffocating enough, had made every needle-prick sting all the more, but thinking something's really happened is another thing entirely.

he doesn't answer that, instead letting his breathing slow. )

[anklets]

[Before they can overflow, she cuts them towards his arm. It's difficult to see it.]

Can you walk?

[velveteened]

( the only thing weakening his knees is horror, indulged long enough already, so he nods after a moment. she'll have to let him down of course, but he can shift his own weight to make that a little easier to do. )

[anklets]

[Her reluctance is fierce, double that of his pause. But it's Oz's unease, not hers, which feeds the nervous fire in her belly, so that when she rips her eyes from the darkening of his sleeve, she does not set him down, after all.]

Then once we reach the train, [ the crunch of cooler gravel underfoot ] we're finding you some first aid, and then you will walk yourself to the first empty seat and stay there.

[velveteened]

( rearranges his weight when she doesn't let him down, but otherwise remains still and quiet. he doesn't nod, she might notice, and it's not immediately that he speaks up — not at all, in fact. )

I won't go anywhere. Once we reach the train, you can go back — I know there are still people you need to find.

[anklets]

Just one, and he's always required as firmer touch.

[Terse, and Lavi's doubtlessly in for hell to pay when they finally step into the Hold once more. She won't shy away from a public berating. Right now, though, her eyes and her arms hurt, and she has no time to think of blunt words.]

It isn't that I want to go back. Or to leave you tethered behind like a dog.

[velveteened]

I know. It's fine, Lenalee.

( might've laughed at another time, considering what lavi's in for, but that's impossible to summon now. he can wait, this time; every step away from the compound is only a reminder of how little he'd want to go back after tasting fresh air anyway. )

[anklets]

[It isn't fine. There is nothing acceptable into doing to him what she hates to have done to herself, and yet--

And yet.

She has no more words to dirty on the air until the train is before her, but rather than slow, Lenalee's gait picks up further. Enough time has been wasted, and that wound shall not close itself.]

Here, get on, get on.

[At least she's letting him down onto his own two feet, now.]

[velveteened]

( he only holds on to steady the transition onto his feet, nodding at her insistence — he is, he really is, and he can understand the worry but for once he'll listen. it may become apparently in the little ways, how he turns towards the train not without a backwards glance but certainly without the deliberate slowness that comes of expecting the other to follow.

she can go now, his posture says. he's expecting her to. )

[anklets]

[Amicable smiles have been prepared for this moment and she delivers them with aplomb, burying second-thoughts deep down. There's some colour yet left underneath all that pale.]

I won't be long. [ she'll have prettier words for him next time, promise ] Don't wait up for me.

[And she and her broken high heels wisp away.]