Description: After rooting through Shadaloo base after base, Elle's Blackjack finds something hidden away, left behind after the abandonment of the area. Unfortuantely for them, what they find is well-guarded...
The Shadaloo base is empty.
The collapse of the once mighty organization was rapid. Without Vega's constant presence strengthening the brainwashed masses of Shadaloo troops, the once busy base was abandoned like a sinking ship. Memorized codes disappeared into the ether, and the stalwart Doll forces have scattered to the four winds, either stumbling off into the jungle with little more than amnesia, or having some sense of purpose as they half remembered lives that they had lost.
But through all of it, there's one person that was part of the mighty organization that wasn't forced, brainwashed, or otherwise coerced into service, and therefore still has everything memorized like clockwork.
That person is Elle.
Once upon a time, she was an attache' to Shadaloo. The woman contracted with the mighty warlord, ran the tactical side of his military, and was an independant voice in the morass of mind control that Vega so favored. To his credit, Vega took every dry, unpleasant comment without once punishing her for insolence.
Why he did that is uncertain, but the result is definitely not without repercussions. Elle respects Vega. While she's raided all the Shadaloo cache's worldwide in order to fun her own group, Elle has left Point 48106 untouched for the most part. Certainly, she knows of it, but has ignored it's presence. Let the place stand as a grim mausoleum for too much ambition and hubris, she figured.
The punishment of power. It's a potent force that sobers her to the realities of empire building, and keeps her out of the sway of Marise thrall, her second in command's seprentine words always trying to tempt her further along a path of no redemption.
When the call finally came in from a NESTS branch who had put two and two together and learned of Elle's connection with the dark psionic master, Elle didn't bat an eye. It was bound to come, after all. The politics of juggernauts isn't unknown to her. As much as a comrade Shadaloo was to NESTS, it's just business. No sense letting a dead hulk go to wate. The salvage job was simple, basic, and well worth the price. Even respect is suceptible to purchase with Elle, and Blackjack's members don't operate off of forced servitude. Elle expects no charity from her teammates. Cash is what runs a business, and Elle pays.
The details were arranged, time and date and plans were aseembled. Both Ayame and Aislinn, her most technologically advanced members, were airdropped not but a few hours ago in front of the base as Elle set up basecamp by the entrace with some hire-ons from the Southtown docks looking for a few bucks and an opportunity to travel.
The base is on emergency power, dark, and empty. The air is stale and damp. The filtration systems broke months ago, requiring the use of filter masks to keep the mold from hurting the lungs. The only illumination comes from dull glow strips, basic running lights from a backup generator still working in the bowels of the base.
NESTS is the client, so everything else is incidental. Elle may salvage what she wishes, save for the contents of the laboratory. Of course, Elle wants to get business out of the way before she cherry picks the rest of the place like a scavenger pulling the last morsels off the bones of a dead whale. Her voice guides her troops down into the balck inner workings of Shadaloo with all the emotion of a machine, tracking their progress via two monitors linked to head cameras. The women are outfitted with status monitoring system that checks heart rate, breathing rate, and body temperature.
"Head left into the next set of sliding doors," she says flatly, watching the computer screens hooked up to the portable generator. "Lab should be on your right. Red door."
So, NESTS is the client. This makes Elle's comments about not divulging any secrets or technology to NESTS a little odd... but Aislinn has already dismissed it. Paradropping in is not a new thing, though perhaps it is for Ayame, and so far the infil has been smooth. Too smooth; Aislinn's senses are on high alert. She isn't twitchy--isn't -ever- twitchy--but she is alert. Any extra bodies are posted at regular intervals as guards, but Ayame is brought along with Aislinn.
Fortunately for her she doesn't have to speak much; her communication is with hand signals and a laser pointer to designate directions more easily. She is wearing her usual NESTS outfit, more suited to infiltration work than anything else she owns, with the head-mounted camera on a headband. Let Elle do the talking--Aislinn is clumsy with it.
Pausing a moment, she nods, then turns to her left, leading silently, her boots thumping faintly on the flooring of the base. Left, to the lab. Quick, and simple.
Ayame seems to be eating the whole thing up. Not scared at all to jump out of flying aircraft. She follows Aislinn's hand gestures easily, only having to be told what meant what once. Attitude has been shelved for paying rapt attention to every detail, every minute thing Aislinn wants her to do. The girl has never tried to impress anyone in her life, but right now she finds herself strangely invested in doing this thing right.
Silent, dressed in an all black outfit of pants and sweater, her grin of amusement is hidden behind her breathing mask as Elle leads them right to the door. Nice base. Someone forgot to turn on the high speed ballistic projectile launchers before they left, it would seem. Someone would have to /care/, she supposes.
The girl falls in line with Aislinn, her long hair wrapped up under a black hat. She's never gone to such great lengths to be /this/ stealthy before. But she's never touched anything on a military scale either. Silence seems the rule of the day, and so she says nothing, brown eyes merely peering into the various shadows, getting a feel for the layout as they move along at a swift speed, not wanting to be caught unable to navigate her way back out on her own if the need arises.
The labrotory, home to Senoh's finest work. Or his greatest failures if you were to ask Vega, depending on the whimsy and wonder of his day. It has seen better days, the silent walls showing a mess of hurried work, a reminder of the last hectic days after Vega's fall at the hands of Kyo and Iori after the invasion of Thailand. Paper is scattered on the floor, littered notes of work on the psycho drive, done in an almost-indecipherable scrawl. Broken computers and shattered workstations show an attempt at destruction, explosive marks scarring metal and showing the efforts that the scientists went through to hide their work. Bodies are scattered around, several months of decay giving them a macabre look. The largest might be familiar, dessicated beyond recognition save for the clothing it wears. Torn and tattered, red cloth with silver shoulders. A rictus grin forced on it's face, empty eyes that stare to the roof.
The only real 'light' that shows in the room, it's own power keeping it relatively intact, is one of the room's test subject tanks - the others, broken and empty are different - their glass chambers are not the steel of this one - and on this one, a silent amber light flashes in a slow cadence above a simple control panel. All in all, it is a malsoleum - a remembrance of a leader, with his mummified body kept within.
Dead bodies. Swell. Aside from just smelling terrible, they don't help the resale value of anything. Elle almost grimaces at the sight, mostly because everything is going to smell like death when they bring it all back up, and the stink is nearly impossible to get rid of.
At least she'll have something for Naerose to do for the next few weeks, even if it means making her scrub everything down with a sponge and industrial strength cleaning supplies.
But the merc's face isn't a point with the two women in the base. Just her words. Elle's been in the lab only a few times. The work that goes on there is beyond her capacity to understand. So too, for her teammates inside. Aislinn is a fighting machine, and Ayame is a security specialist. Neither of them know one thing about advanced bioengineering and design, and Elle knows it. But they're what she's got, and Elle will be damed if she can't make do.
Her voice crackles over the intercom system: "Kid Vicious, you know the drill. I want a slow room sweep. No sense dying now that we're in the toybox. Give it a rundown with the smoker to check for IR trips and use the luminol and blacklights for the rest. Disarm it if you find it, and then check out the working bio tank."
"Vicki, see if you can't restart the emergency backup. I think the lab has it's own seperate generator if Vega is as paranoid as I think he was. After that, I want you to take the sampling kit and see if there's anything viable on the corpse in red."
Step by step. Elle knows her troops well, and spends the time to actually get to know their capabilities. It's the little things that matter.
Elle may have sent her two most technologically-apt members in, but she's no slouch herself. Tilting her head and listening to the orders, Aislinn merely nods; the weird nicknames don't even faze her anymore. 'Small Wonder', 'Kid Vicious', 'Vicki'... just one of Elle's quirks.
And she may command the team, such as it is, but Elle -is- the one in general control and Aislinn has been raised... if you can call it that... to respect that. So immediately, she goes to the control panel.
But before she touches a single thing she's breaking out a small LED whitelight, the focused beam bright enough to ensure she doesn't miss any details that would lead to, say, room lockdown and deadly neurotoxins. Details are important.
A visual sweep of the lab from the entrance and Ayame is captivated. It looks like a puzzle waiting to be solved. A mystery to unravel. And potentially a challenge. Crouching down, she slips a thin backpack from off her back, placing it on the floor, hands slipping in to withdraw a small canister. Pulling a ring causes it to start releasing a small, dense smoke that clings to the floor, spreading out in front of her a ways. Harmless, it will reveal any floor level detection beams, giving her a chance to head further into the room.
"I don't think anything is active," she remarks after a couple minutes of poking around carefully. "Though..." The girl frowns a bit behind her mask. "That might change when the generator goes online. Might want to keep it to flashlights." She doesn't add anything after that, leaving it up to the call of those who she's going to trust with the big picture for now.
As she's speaking, she's already crouching in front of the body she's convinced is the deceased tyrant, squinting at the carcass. Elle will see as much from the mounted camera. "Sucks. Run an empire, then you end up like this," she mutters before falling quiet. No sense in clogging the airwaves with needless chatter. She can't help herself. Her hand reaches out as she looks the uniform over for any sign of medals, insignia, or any other momento to take with her. But something stops her after a moment, her hand retracting. Mmn. She's not superstitious. But still, considering /what/ he was when he was alive? She's got plenty right to be nervous when he's dead. She'll let Aislinn handle the, ah, sampling.
Moving to the biotank, the girl's hand comes up to brush lightly over the buttons, not pushing anything. "It's still active," she remarks, feeling the vibrations of something mechanical concealed within the frame. "I can have this open real quick if you think we should." She puts her ear up to the side of it as if to listen, not really sure what to make of it. It's only interesting to her because she doesn't know what's inside yet. And because it hasn't been opened yet. She intends to fix both of those things.
Its own seperate generator, indeed. This room is theoretically more important to Vega than the Throne Chamber, or at least - it used to be. Now, well.. After the Zero Project's failure, it was pushed to the side in favor of a less 'brainy' approach. There are connections and hookups that show an external generator system in one of the corners, a lack of damage there making it possible to restore full power. Admittedly, little to anything is working anymore - the shattered screens and general destruction will keep much from operating. As Aislinn approaches the control panel, the flickering, blinking light continues it's silent pace, a slow flashing every other second or so. The light shows details on the control panel, a few unmarked buttons, one larger than the others. The padpoints show no traps, per se - no needlemarks, no 'deadly poisons' that would show under the luminesence. It was designed to not need defense, it seems.
For Elle and Ayame, the possibility of an interesting sight - as Ayame turns away from what may have been the dictator, the body starts to decompose further as if accellerated suddenly by an outside force. Lips peel back from teeth, bones calcifying and crumbling downwards, leaving muck and dust left behind, in the remnants of clothes that he once wore. In the dark, an almost-invisible color-shift occurs, purple and black at the edge of vision, then gone with nary a 'sigh'. With the focus on the tank, however - it may not be noticed until after.
... speaking of generators... after a quick, and thorough, examination of the various buttons and switches at her command, Aislinn is swiftly working to restore power to the room. It isn't an easy task--but NESTS agents aren't just trained to bash face. Because bashing face is important but so is knowing a screwdriver from a socket, and... well, Aislinn isn't gonna notice what just happened, either. In fact, her focus is solely on the control panel in this room.
"Power is almost restored," she says, briskly, just a few minutes later, and then with a few more keyings and a button press... and the flick of a switch... power -should- be restored. If not? Then Aislinn has more work to do...
Ayame glances toward the side, casting one last gaze in the direction of the deceased dictator to be. That the body, or lack thereof, has changed substantially since she was looking at it a moment ago doesn't get missed. Her attention to detail is far too sharp for that. Glancing over her shoulder she tries to figure out if someone else disturbed the corpse. She sure doesn't think it was anything /she/ did. "... might have a hard time getting those samples," she remarks, turning her eyes back toward the tank.
Breathing in then exhaling, the girl seems eager to get started working on it, but also not entirely sure what she's dealing with. What if she gets it open and some kind of biogenetic mutation leaps out of the tank? She's seen it in the movies she's snuck into, honest!!
But a job is a job, she supposes, and she /is/ curious. Slipping a small PDA out from her trusty side pouch, she flicks it open, pulling out a retractable cord from the side of it. From another slot a Leatherman's tool is pulled out. Handy, omni-tool that it is. Using the chisel in it to pry off the cover of the button panel, the girl sets about inserting the wire from her customized PDA into the circuit array.
All attention switches to the display of her device then as she starts pushing buttons, occasionally reaching up to push down one of the buttons on the tank, testing which circuits it fires up, which bridges it gaps, and what she can tell of the logic intended to be fired by each one. "Any minute now..."
And then there was light. Fitful at first, flickering flourescents lighting up the ugly scene. Somehow, even with the harsh white light starting to shine down from above, the exterior darkness seems like it tries to reach in. But that's just silly, really. As the lights come up, some of the computers beep, attempting to turn on, but failing quite miserably, errors and noise as they kick into half-life. Overhead, air starts to pump out, a slight breeze to shunt things towards the door, starting to clear the air. It should, hopefully help with the stench - or simply spread it through the site, much to the chagrin of those other guards within.
Ayame's own PDA can see things working within the tank - the buttons seem to control temprature regulators, areation of the fluid inside, and of course, opening and closing the steel enclosure. There are two seperate opening items, hinting that the case is similar to the glass enclosures, simply reinforced. The other wirings hint towards some sort of interface to the internals of the tank itself, or whatever lines within. As the power comes on to the room, signals are sent to the tank itself - and that orange light flashes faster, starting to pulse closer to once per second...
Good. The generator is up and running, at least. That part done, Aislinn remains at the control panel, seeing what she can see. After all, powering up is the easiest part, isn't it? And oh yeah, that stench. Oh, that stench. Only a focused kind of girl like Aislinn could completely ignore it... but the air conditioning coming on, that's a help.
"Elle, Aislinn reporting. We have power. There appear to be automated systems coming online. They are not defensive in nature; my recommendation is that we let them go." Obviously, Vega, Senoh, or the lunch ladies had something going in here. If it turns out to be something bad and ugly, well, then, that's what Ais and Ayame are there for, too.
Alright. Looks like there's finally something going on worth paying attention to. Elle observes the scene with mild interest. Looks like the overture of silence to all employers was a good idea. If there's something valuable here, then odds are she's not going to want to share it. Not yet, anyhow, until she discerns the true purpose of everything.
"Vicki, go ahead abd back the Kid up and see if you can't get things working in full." She turns to a group of armed men, and motions. "I'm sending down a backup squad to help start carting things out. ETA about ten minutes." The rustling of men and women packing gear as they head towards the entrace can be heard over the intercom as Elle directs the heavy lifters of the group to head down to where the girls are to pick up stuff.
"Stay careful. I don't know what's in there, and I'm not about to lose two people to a science fair project," she intones as she looks over the display from Ayame's headset. Wiring, eh? Nothing that Ayame's tools can't handle it seems. Granted, she doesn't have a clue what the chamber could be incubating, or if it should be opened at all. Nevertheless, leaving it there now is sure to result in whatever's inside dying off. "Kid Vicious, go ahead and crack that thing open. I want to see what's inside."
Ah, good. Some air in there. The girl has no compuctionons about being a grave robber, per se, but it definitely comes with the occupational hazard of smelling like hell. Aislinn's report is noted, and she glances around the room only briefly as things try to fire up. A couple computer fans spin up, but the computers themselves look like lost causes. Might be some hard drives with salvageable data to be extracted though. Just shooting a case rarely does a good job of destroying /that/.
"All right, hope this doesn't end up being a big mistake," Ayame remarks into her mic, glancing up at the countainer. Her thumb comes down on a key on her PDA and her other hand raises to press two of the buttons on the tank. "I'm going to open it up."
She isn't even aware that she's started to hold her breath... and it's not because of the stench of the decaying bodies, either. Anticipation to see what a warlord saw fit to leave behind.
Defensive systems, just from turning the power to the lab back on? Perish the thought! No, no, that will probably be some oddity later, when this generator cross-connects to other generators within the building. After all, this /was/ the important room, before the Project. Eventually, power may come on in other areas, which will be more ... 'defensive'. But for now, it's just the lab that's come to life - some ways more literal than others.
Opening both tanks at the same time causes a hiss and whine of machinery, metal gears unsealing, the tank inside raising - and gallons upon gallons of purple and black goop splash to the ground. Wires spark and fall as the body supported inside loses its connection to them, and falls bonelessly to the bottom of the tank, half-in and half-out of the container. On the figure's head, a small circlet of metal, fine wires and sealed electronics that cracks as she hits bottom. Grey eyes are wide open, well-lubricated from the 'bath', but not really 'seeing' anything. As the body hits the ground, the orange light stops flashing, a steady red instead. Perhaps some sort of monitor, through the connective wires? She's not dead, oh no - shallow breathing, if anything.
Aislinn, were she a more normal person, might say 'are you seeing this?' Because it is a pretty odd sight. But she doesn't. One, she -knows- Elle is seeing this... there's been no indication that connection's been lost... and secondly...
Well, secondly, Aislinn is flashing back to some vague memories of her own. She's stock-still, riveted by the sounds and the sights--temporarily incommunicado, for all intents and purposes. Questions she never thought about asking herself are now flying through her head, and the burst of unfamiliar emotion they bring is distressing... so personal control comes first and foremost for the lavender-haired NESTS agent.
Elle is not an emotional person. She's just not. She's known for her dry, almost world weary approach to everything. She's barely in her mid twenties, though. It's an attitude that seems unwarranted, but she /wears/ it well. She's just seen a lot in her all too short life.
Men that would be gods, powerhouses beyond human comprehension. She's fought serial killers, magical girls, psychics, monks, ninjas, robots, male models, millionaire playboys... the list is endless. Having purposefully exposed herself to the wanton strangeness that the world has to offer, there's not much that fazes Elle.
However, there's having seen everything, and then there's finding something you simply didn't expect to find. For example, when someone finds money in their pants pocket. It's a nice surprise, yes, and usually warrants some comment, even though everyone's seen twenty dollars before.
But then there are unpleasant surprises, like finding out the apple you packed for lunch is bad, or getting a parking ticket. Surprises go either way, and even though it's a fact of life, it gets a reaction. Even Elle's not immune to that. So, when she sees black sludge pour out of the chamber along with a neked chick with a metallic laurl on her head, Elle speaks her peice instantly.
"What the fuck is /that/?"
Another look at the screen, and she makes more of an evaluation. Her brain ratchets out several theories right off the cuff, but she says nothing for the time being. "Check it's vitals, quick. I don't want it dying on us yet."
As the tank begins to rise and the contents spill out, Ayame pulls the wire from the control panel and leaps backward, landing up on one of the counters in a crouched position, one hand already reaching toward one of the sheaths on her belt in anticipation of the worst. But... from what she can tell, the worst /isn't/ what happens.
"Looks like they were cooking up girl stew," she remarks dryly in response to Elle's outburst, sounding markedly calm for having never seen something like this before outside of pop sci fi movies. Elle is jaded because she's seen it all. Ayame's imperturbable for other reasons entirely.
Her hand moves away from her belt. Weapons aren't needed right now, it seems. But at the request for vitals to be checked, the girl glances toward Aislinn. Ayame knows a lot of odds and ends skills. But in the area of checking on someone's health after they just fell out of a bio tube, she's way out of her league. Here's hoping Aislinn knows what to do.
Something out of science fiction! Something out of /bad/ science fiction. Senoh was insane, but brilliant in the same time. People in Shadaloo, familiar with the making of Cammy and the conversion of the Dolls might know more of this process, having seen it several times over. However, the only one of those has just half-washed away from the goopy gunk on the floor - heading towards one of the many drains in the labratory. Stuck in the middle of the remnants of the tube, the girl continues to 'breathe', and stay semi-comatose. For a minute, then a few seconds more.. And then, finally, action.
After all, she's been breathing purple gunk for how long, few know. Suddenly not in it anymore, her body rejects what is left, and her torso convulses, and more of the gunk is voided from her lungs. She heaves her body for breath, her arms flailing wildly as she starts to come to life, though there's little to no force behind her motions.
Uh, well... crap. Aislinn blinks out of her reverie and shakes her head. "Medical attention," she snaps, quickly, and motions to the more medically-inclined of her team. She, however, is staying away from the gunk-covered being because she is -wary-...
... and perhaps still wracked with emotion. This is not what she expected at all, and it's really messing with her head. "Elle, I--need a moment," she finally says, to inform her commander that -something- is up with her...
Ayame's curiosity is piqued once she has a moment to observe everything going on. Ais waves for a medical expert to come forward and the blonde haired girl approaches at the same time, crouching down next to the quite alive young woman. "Well, she's not dead," the girl comments.
Elle will be able to see that. But Ayame does glance toward Aislinn next, brow furrowing, perhaps wondering what it is that's got her so upset. "What do you want us to do with her?" she asks into her mic, looking back toward the sole survivor of whatever it is that happened here so that Elle can get a better look at her via the camera.
"Hey, hey, calm down," she continues, hand coming out to rest against the now quite awake female's forehead. She knows nothing about what temperature to expect and she's going to get out of the way if the medic starts to get annoyed. For now, though, it seems to be Ayame's attempt to calm the girl down. "No one here's gonna do anything, we just want to see if you're all right."
She really has no idea. Elle could ask her to slit the woman's throat in the next second and she'd do it without so much as blinking. But barring that order, trying to calm the girl down seems like the sensible thing to do in Ayame's rather pragmatic mind.
Aislinn emotional? This is new. Elle doesn't have time to muse on it or yell at Aislinn for being unprofessional. Where the hell is Tran when you need him? The mercenary woman narrows her eyes. "The recovery team is still five minutes from your position," Elle says, checking the status. There's a lot of ground to cover descending into the Shadaloo base. Howver, Ayame knows basic first aid, as does Camille. That much ahs been trained into her memory.
Elle made sure to supply each of her operatives with standard medical supplies. Small kits filled with gauze, painkillers, amphetemines, and 'stimpaks' which are little more than tiny injections of a potent chemical cocktail conjured up by NESTS scientitsts. Not enough to give anyone an edge in a battle, but enough to keep people from outright dying in a bad situation.
"See if there's anything you can't dress her in, and sit on her until the recovery team arrives," is her answer to Ayame's appropriate question. After all, it's not like Blackjack finds chicks in tubes every dayof the week. "That girl's worth more to a lot of people than I'd care to mention right now. Keeping her from dropping dead is priority one."
Elfa is listening, really - probably unable to hear the conversation between Elle and her team, but able to at least hear the words from Ayame and Aislinn as they speak. It's enough to snap her into something sembling conciousness, awareness - coherency may be a moment or two off. She curls up a bit as she starts to come through towards conciousness, then focuses on the women in front of her.
"I'm.. I'm.. where is here, what is here.. Who are you?" A heavy russian accent makes her half-decipherable. Even in this stressful situation, she's already starting to regain sanity, an almost focused calm coming over her - certainly less than the shocky surprise that most kidnapped girls might come to. Already wiping off the gunk as well, she seems to be trying to cast it off, pushing it away. "Are you the police..!?" One can hope, at least...
Snap out of it, Aislinn. You've got problems and they're right in front of you. The girl starts--it isn't a physical movement so much as a 'sense' that she kind of jerks awake--head turning, scanning the area. "There," she says, pointing to a dark red uniform that... well, apparently looks like it was made for the girl.
But it's there, and convenient, and Aislinn won't complain. Is -this- what they came to get? It can't be, and yet... maybe it is. NESTS isn't the only evil supergroup in the world to have cloning technology, after all, and this is proof right here.
"Who are you?" asks Aislinn, directly, to the awakened young woman, the question delivered in a terse, clipped manner. But does she even know? After all, she has carbonite sickn--I mean... ressurrection sick--she just woke up.
Ayame leans her head to the side for a moment, listening to Elle's instructions. Some time before the crew gets down here to take this newfound problem off her hands? She can get by in the meantime, "She appears uninjured. She might be just fine in a minute."
She glances to the side, following Aislinn's gesture toward the dark crimson uniform and nods her head curtly. To Elfa's question, the blonde glances back down, the mask concealing her frown. "Here...? We're deep underground in some base..." As to who these wouldbe rescuers might be? Well, she isn't going to say anything to that as she gets to her feet, letting Aislinn move in to talk to the girl.
Ayame scoots away, retrieving the uniform from the counter over to the side, holding it up in front of her. "Yeah, this will do." Her expression is tight lipped, the entire situation feeling very foreign to her. She's not in the habit of helping people out, but in this case, she's /almost/ sympathetic. After all, she fights tooth and nail to control the course of her own life, and here's someone who has had the power to do so completely taken away from her. Sealed away, left down here for months since the end of the war... confined, locked up, unable to pursue her own hopes and dreams? It brings a shiver to the normally unflappable girl.
Moving back over with the uniform in hand, she crouches down, "Let's get you dressed, ne?" Her hand comes up, removing her mask and lifting it up to rest on the top of her head, allowing her to smile at Elfa. Even when feeling uncomfortable, smiling comes easily. It's the universal sign of having nothing but friendly intentions, and Ayame is well practiced at it.
"Let me help you get this on."
So many questions. So /many/, and her answers are so short in coming. Instead, more are thrown at her, Elfa focusing her eyes on Aislinn. She starts, but shoots back quickly with her name, said with only a slight hitch at the start. "El... Elfa Bykova. My father.. his name is Vyacheslav Bykov. He's .. he's looking for me, I know it." Pieces are falling into place for the girl, and she's not so certain that things are as they could be, or should be. Her eyes grow a little more wary, and she allows the help given - the outfit is built for her, in as much as the Doll outfits ever are. (Far too tight, who knew!)
"You're not... mn." With that, she goes more quiet, recovering and adjusting to the situation given, almost docile. "Whatever you do to me... At least I'm not in that .. thing." She doesn't remember a lot of it, truth be told - but she's certainly going to play on sympathy, if she can. Maybe, if she's lucky, her father will be able to pay whatever ransom they decide is needed for her.
Ransom? Nonsense. Elle's not a petty criminal or a terrorist. She's a mercenary. There's more value in the information the girl carries than her actual physical worth to somebody's dad. Granted, Elle's not seeing dollar signs just yet. There's a few things that need to be taken care of, first. The foremost of these things: medical attention.
The evac team arrives just as Elfa is done getting dressed, a series of three men and three women dressed in combat fatigues and heavy flak vests, making them look like they should be part of the Ikari Warriors moreso than anything Elle scraped up. Maybe they used to be part of that orgnization. Who knows? Elle finds people everywhere and puts them to their best use.
The leader of the platoon, a rather plain looking woman with short, mousy brown hair under a steel helmet nods to the women. "Peterson. We're the evac and recovery squad," she informs as the two medical specialists rush to check on Elfa. "We've already gotten most of the extra stuff, and we were working our way back up when we got the call." She touches her earpeice, and nods as she gets in a report from the rest of the crew.
Then suddenly, a loud whineing noise is heard as the generators immediately start to boot up. "Looks like all the generators just started back up again," Peterson says, eyes flicking over two the two Blackjack agents.
Then it starts.
The woman immediately blanches as she yanks the earpeice from her head, the tinny screams and shreiks of base defenses coming online, systematically slaughtering those on the recovery team that haven't made it out of the base yet. Palefaced, she leans against the wall, looking at her team, Elfa, and the Blackjack teammates.
And then comes the dry, unenthusiastic voice of Elle over the com: "We have a situation."
'A situation.' Right. Aislinn shuts off her own internal commworks just after that initial interference--self-preservation and protection, of course--and they cut back in just in time to hear "--situation." Right. A situation.
Aislinn spins back to the control panel, her fingers flying as she types and toggles. "Confirmed," she says, her distraction gone, the evolving situation cutting through her haze like a laser beam. "Base defenses are primed, armed, and system is in lockdown. I cannot access from here; all access is now only available through command central."
Which they are nowhere near, of course. "We will have to fight our way out."
The medical crew arrive and Ayame stands up, turning toward them, having finished helping Biotube Girl get dressed. "She's all yours," the girl remarks, thumb over her shoulder as she starts to walk away slowly. Her work here is done, right? Nothing else to hack in this room, and security seems inert...
And then things fire up. Screams, what sounds like turrets, and Elle's understatement of there being a situation now. Ayame doesn't so much as blink as she watches Aislinn check the control panel to get a feel for the layout of the place. "If this place is as serious on keeping its secrets locked away as I imagine it is, trying to hack the security remotely is just going to trigger failsafes. And those tend to be gigantic explosions."
Aislinn indicates that fighting their way out will be necessary and Ayame nods slightly. If she's nervous, she hides it well. "All right." Her faint smile is visible with her mask having been raised up to rest atop her head. But now she brings it back down to cover her mouth and nose. There's going to be a whole lotta dust getting kicked up with what's about to happen.
Moving over to the door of the lab, she braces herself against the frame. She isn't going to move to the hall without Aislinn's order to do so. The look she gives the lavender haired girl suggests that for the moment she's perfectly willing to follow her lead.
The recovery team start to lug their gear and Elfa, and Peterson's face immediately regains some color. She is, after all, a mercenary herself. "You guys lead," she says, "and we'll follow you out and cover for the skinjob." Meaning Elfa. Just a fun nickname for engineered or synthetic humanoids. You start to say strange things when you encounter them a lot.
The team readies their weapon, but look nervous. After all, they're recovery teams, not front line fighters. While many of them have practical battle experience, not many of them have done corridor fighting or shipboard combat, which would be the closest anology here. The protracted space and the maneuvering problems that such things can provide make it especially dangerous.
Aislinn is the team commander now. Elle can't realyl do much at this point: going in herself would put the situation in additional danger. Therefore, Elle can only do one thing. "Downloading into your HUD," Elle says, inputting a command to Aislinn. "That should give you the map layout, as well as bottlenecks. I didn't set this system up, some of it is broken, and the map has some inaccuracies... but it's the best we got. I'll do what I can from outside, but there's not a whole lot I can do, since the place's nearest access port is amout 100 meters down an elevator shaft."
Her first 'real' command. Aislinn pauses for a moment, taking the download, looking through the map. Noting turret points and other traps. She's completely still and completely silent for a long moment, then starts gesturing. Recovery team, and Elfa, in back--clearly. Ayame and herself up front. Pausing, she turns to one of the teammembers... and starts taking any explosives they have. She will need them.
"Recovery team, stay back. Protect the cargo at all costs." And when she says all costs, she means it. She knows they aren't warriors... but they're -professionals-. "Ayame, with me." And that's all she says... as she steps to the door.. then turns to the recov team. "Wait thirty seconds before you begin to move."
And then she's out the door--pulling pins from grenades and lobbing them at emplacements, running a jagged, zigzag pattern. The plan is simple--the swiftest path to the elevator and hell on anything in the way.
COMBATSYS: Elle has started a fight here.
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Elle 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Ayame has joined the fight here on the left meter side.
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////////////////////]
Ayame 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Elle
COMBATSYS: Aislinn has joined the fight here on the left meter side.
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Aislinn 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Elle
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Ayame 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Elle blocks Aislinn's Thrown Object.
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////////////// ]
Aislinn 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Elle
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Ayame 0/-------/-------|
Ayame's mind speeds up as she begins to consider this next challenge. She's dealt with security systems before, but this is /military/ grade, and that changes things. Militaries don't screw around. They have big budgets and spend like they have even bigger ones.
"This should be interesting," she murmurs from beneath her mask, brown eyes watching Aislinn, ready to follow the girl into the hall the instant she makes the call. And then it's go time and she moves into action.
Aislinn tosses the grenades about, causing damage here and there. Ayame is trailing behind though as the motion sensors bring turrets to track Aislinn. Running up behind her teamleader, Ayame leaps up and over her, grappling onto one of the turrets. From her belt she slips out three of the dozon kunai she has sheathed and shoves each of the small blades down through the vent holes on the barrel of the turret. It should do a number on the machine when it goes to fire next.
Behind her mask, Ayame smiles faintly. This is fun. Leaping down off the turret, she's back in behind Aislinn again. "This must be where hazard pay kicks in, right?" she states, still sounding all together calm. Of course, she hasn't gotten shot yet either.
COMBATSYS: Elle blocks Ayame's Medium Strike.
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Aislinn 0/-------/-------|=------\-------\0 Elle
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Ayame 0/-------/-------|
The recovery team follows in line. They know what to do, and Aislinn is followed without much protest as they form a circle around Elfa. They match pace with the two girls quickly, ducking as the grenades go off, tossing shrapnel everywhere. The shriek of steel on steel fills the air as kunai are jammed into the workings of a turret, the machine gun rendered incapable of firing.
But the Shadaloo base is far from defeated. A few random attack son automatic gun ports are child's play. Vega's ultimate stronghold isn't precisely something that many people lived through attacking. Then again, it's never been attacked, and not in this condition.
The turrets were a distraction. The real problem comes from the small holes in the wall that iris open as the team runs down the hallway. As they propel forward, the system shoots forth a series of energy beams, like an electrified gate. The shimmering power is meant to fry anything charging down the hallway, stunning them into complacency for further SHadaloo experimentation.
It's not so much a powerful defense as it is a stopping weapon to keep emepriments from getting too far away from the labs, but as a few Dolls ccan attest to, it's rather effective when it hits.
COMBATSYS: Aislinn fails to slow High Voltage from Elle with Large Thrown Object.
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Aislinn 0/-------/-----==|===----\-------\0 Elle
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Ayame 0/-------/-------|
Aislinn sees the ports opening up, and while she can't stop running--to come to a halt would be sure death--she can try to deal with the equipment. Three grenades are armed and ready to be lobbed...
But the throw is for naught... as the grenades are duds. And then Aislinn is plowing -through- the energy beams, the power lighting her up, literally, sizzling her flesh. It's pain, of course, that old friend...
She can only hope that Ayame can do something about the grid before the recovery team has to go through it.
COMBATSYS: Ayame blocks Elle's High Voltage.
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Aislinn 0/-------/-----==|===----\-------\0 Elle
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Ayame 0/-------/------=|
Okay, those aren't turrets, Ayame realizes as the irises screw open and unleash the powerful beams of energy. Considering the kind of juice it would take to pump those out, the girl figures that the primary generators must be back in nearly full operational condition. Anything less would have likely fizzled quickly.
Reflecting on this moment at a later time, she'll marvel at how natural it felt to take her next action. She'll wonder how it is that she could have /possibly/ put herself in harm's way to keep another from being jolted or vaporized. But it's what she does, moving to the side, avoiding two of the powerful beams yet deliberately stepping into a third one, arms raised, the girl bunkering down to absorb the shocking beam just before it was about to careen further down the hall and strike poor Peterson dead on. "Che," the girl hisses as she lowers her arms slowly, the sleeves of her sweater all but vaporized, her skin reddened a little.
A glance is cast over her shoulder to make sure that the evac team is still hanging in there okay before she goes back on the offense. With precious little time before the beams can fire a second time, Ayame pulls a small coil of thin cabling from a coil attached to her belt, while also fishing out a heavy, rounded metal weight from her pouch of toys. Clipping the weight onto the end of the rope, Ayame rushes forward, swinging the meteor hammer over her head and sending it out toward the irises, one right after another, attempting to smash the fragile electronics therein to prevent a second volley.
COMBATSYS: Elle slows Power Fling from Ayame with Silent Scream.
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Aislinn 0/-------/-----==|====---\-------\0 Elle
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Ayame 0/-------/------=|
Ayame was right about one thing: pull power isn't something the base can sustain for a long time. The grenades are enough to destablize the system, but when Ayame blocks the burst of power, the system overloads and shorts. The delicate electronics fizzle, spark, and are completely decimated by the meteor hammer striking dead on.
The heavy weight does more damage than that, though. The weighty projectile smashes not tjust the projection devices, but as it hurls forward, the sonic cannon that drops down to stop both of the girls in their tracks takes a savage hit, and it cracks and shatters into peices.
So far so good. The defenses seem to be doing only a mediocre job in stopping the two Blackjack members who are leading the recovery team to safety.
From the elevator, it'll be a solid stretch to the hallway, as long as someone can hack the obstinate electronics to get everyone to the exit...
Aislinn's voice is... terse. But also tense, which is unusual. "Elle, requesting report on the electronics," she says, as Ayame's attack is more than enough to overcome the current series of defenses. However... Aislinn is still fairly worried about what's coming up next.
The injuries she just sustained won't slow her down much, she thinks, as she makes her next assault--speeding up, running hard, and leaping to try and put a boot through what looks to be a heavy minigun coming out of the ceiling...
"Remain alert," is her order to her team. Yeah, they know their jobs, but a reminder never hurt, right...?
After kicking the meteor hammer out one last time, Ayame pulls the weapon back, spinning in place to allow the cabling to wrap over her shoulders, coming to a rest with the weight dangling down her back. She can unwrap the weaponry later if needs be, and it'll be a lot quicker to access than when she had to set it up initially.
Rushing headling after Aislinn, the girl keeps up, watching the lavender haired one go for the mini gun. This time Ayame doesn't attack anything at all. Her skills are needed elsewhere. Namely, the electronics panel right in front of them now. "Cover me," the girl asks, slipping her hand into her pouch to pull her PDA back out, leaning against the wall to make herself as narrow a target as possible.
Eyes skim over the surface of the panel as she compares its make and arrangement against other such devices she's hacked before. The wire from before is jacked in quickly, and the girl begins typing away, rerouting circuit logic, tripping up components, trying to come across the right thing to unseal the doors. It's a mixture of guess work, dumb luck, and a binary algorithm of narrowing things down to the right combination. Wincing now and then at the sound of nearby bullets ricocheting off the walls, it's a struggle to keep focused on the tiny screen rather than looking out for a place to just duck and hide to save her own skin.
But Ayame has a job to do, and for once, her mind is able to focus unerringly on just that single task of trying to get the whole team out of the final exit.
COMBATSYS: Ayame focuses on her next action.
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Aislinn 0/-------/-----==|====---\-------\0 Elle
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Ayame 0/-------/------=|
COMBATSYS: Elle blocks Aislinn's Strong Kick.
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Aislinn 0/-------/----===|======-\-------\0 Elle
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Ayame 0/-------/------=|
The minigun takes an incredible pounding, swinging wide as the weapon opens fire. However, the powerful dent Aislinn puts into the thing only allows it to fire off a few dozen rounds before it finally rattles itself to death, sputtering and shaking as the rounds simply detonate, sending shrapnel everywhere just as Ayame manages the elexctronic lockpick.
The doors slide open, allowing everyone to pile inside. The elevator is spacious enough to fit everyone, and so far even the recovery team seems to have made it out alright.
"The base security system is only about twenty percent operational," Elle says, her voice as dry as ever as she checks her readings. Ayame's progress is watched silently. The girl knows what she's doing. Elle doesn't need to talk over her shoulder. "Looks like you're doing fine. Keep it up."
With a lurch, the old elevator starts up again, and the sounds of gunfire die down as the machine takes the group to the top of the Shadaloo base. The quiet sets in, with nothing more than the breathing of the recovery ream and the blank stares of Elfa to really put context to what's going on. Feet shuffle, and the doors immediately open as the top floor is finally reached, the soft light of the numbers above indicating floor 1.
The doors open, and everything looks clear. However, as the team tries to make it out, the walls have one final trick. A combination of that same energy feild, plus the additional issue of destructive spikes that lance out of the wall, in some kind of perverse Burmese tiger trap. A fast foot will allow a fleeing individual to escape, or at least only take damage.
To the slow and unwitting?
Well, it'll be fast, at least.
COMBATSYS: Aislinn blocks Elle's Ace of Spades.
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Aislinn 0/-------/---====|=======\-------\0 Elle
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Ayame 0/-------/------=|
A final trap. Of course. Aislinn glances upwards... and braces herself. She can only brace for the energy field... but the spikes? Those she twists to avoid, as best as she can. Her uniform is wrecked--but it can be saved. Thin red lines, marks of scoring and bleeding, appear on her body where the uniform was rent open.
But, she's still active, and moving quickly; small, but strong hands snapping out, bending the spikes that she can reach, turning them from deadly... to annoyance. Not quite the kind of thing she was trained for of course, but adaptability is key.
"Ayame, deal with the energy field," commands Aislinn, as she clears the physical problems... barehanded. This little trip is just about over.
COMBATSYS: Ayame counters Ace of Spades from Elle with Bright Renewal.
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Aislinn 0/-------/---====|=======\=------\1 Elle
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Ayame 0/-------/----===|
Ayame isn't idle during the elevator ride up. The PDA she was using took a round right before the systems down below finally shut off and now the girl is looking at it, holding the device that had served her so well in the past, now with a bonus bullet hole right through the screen. The girl frowns a little as she flips it closed for perhaps the last time and slips it back into her pouch. She may not have gotten shot, but she feels like she's taken a casualty all the same.
The last hall of defenses are up ahead and the girl can't imagine that means things are going to get any easier. In the same motion that slips away the destroyed PDA, she retrieves her most trusted 'friend,' her custom made staff of the hundred and one tricks. Holding the tube verticle, she applies pressure to the point that only she knows, and the telescoping polearm expands down and up. The confines of the elevator force her to keep it held upright for now... But when the doors open and Aislinn rushes out to fend off the spikes coming in at everyone, Ayame is right behind her, staff held at an angle then.
"You got it," she replies to the order to finish taking out the defense mechanism. Standing behind Aislinn, she's able to observe the pattern and sequence of the beams and spike volleys. "Here goes," she whispers to herself, leaping up and over Aislinn again, staff forward. The next volley is deflected by the trusty titanium pole as Ayame spins the weapon swiftly, charging forward before leaping into the air and spinning around to slam the lightweight yet remarkably strong weapon into emitters just before the next plasma torrent could be unleashed.
Landing, she turns around and strikes the other array just before they fire, having detected the pattern of their power cycling in the moments she took to observe. One final spin and smash for the last array and Ayame turns and runs back, sliding into position at Aislinn's side, looking to the younger appearing girl for the next call.
"I don't know if they have anything else down this hall." The exit is just ahead, but if there's any more destructive, deadly defenses, it might as well be miles away for all it matters. A nod back toward the rest of the team to indicate they can follow, as long as she and Ais go first, and then it's on their way toward the hatch leading out. She keeps the staff in hand, just in case. It's good at deflecting painful spikes...
Something dramatic should happen at this point. Between Aislinn's brute force plowing through the attacking spikes and Ayame's deft deflection and deactivation of a great many of them, there's not a single casualty among the recovery team, and Elfa has practically no trouble at all stumbling her way through the automated attacks.
But there's no redlining of the systems, no self destruct sequence. The base simply starts to power down in stages again. Without regular maintenance and care, the systems simply can't handle the strain that two trained fighters pose.
Lights flicker rapidly, and the final array of guns at the entrance turn, and then die, swinging weakly on hinges as the team makes their way to the exit, and an acrid smell of smoke fills the air as wires promptly melt and fuses blow. It seems that a small fire has started somewhere inside the walls. If not for the dampness of the air, it would be serious. As it is, the liklihood of the metal base catching flame are miniscule.
And then it's daylight, the base has been dealth with, and the prize has been retreived, at the cost of a few expendable troops. More or less a success, yes?
As the recovery team spills out to the ground, barely making it to the basecamp not a few meters away. Elle is standing there looking over a laptop display in her hands. "Looks like you made it out," she says drolly, tilting her head. "I was about to call and let you know that if you had just stayed put for about twenty minutes, the power would just overload... but it looks like I was a little late for that."
As the small troop piles out of the base, Ayame collapses her staff back down, returning it to its proper place with an affectionate pat. She's a bit out of breath. The race out of the structure was a lot of pressure and the stakes for failure would have undoubtedly been death by security-device. But they made it out.
Approaching Elle to get the report about the systems only having had about a twenty minute life span anyway, Ayame, shrugs, hands coming up faintly, "Well, who wants to wait that long?" she states, sounding entirely unannoyed by the fact that they just scrambled through a lethal obstacle course for what sounds like pretty much no reason.
She does fish the PDA out of her pouch though, holding it up between two fingers. "I'm going to need a new one of these though." On that note she sounds a little glum. That one had some time on it. A couple years old, highly modified from the device she originally stole from a Radio Shack supply depot.
The girl lifts her hand up to remove the mask and the cap on her head, allowing her hair to fall back down over her shoulders, less restrained than normal due to lacking the ribbon that normally helps to keep it in place.
"What'cha going to do with her?" she asks, nodding toward Elfa. "I imagine she represents quite the find. I get the impression that wasn't exactly what we went in looking for." Elle doens't seem the sort to withhold vital information about an op, after all. If she didn't tell them to expect a bio tube with a floating unconscious girl, then Ayame is willing to bet she didn't know about it before hand either.
COMBATSYS: Elle has left the fight here.
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Aislinn 0/-------/---====|
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Ayame 0/-------/----===|
COMBATSYS: Ayame has left the fight here.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Aislinn 0/-------/---====|
"Not sure yet," is the reply. "I don't know if there's a market for her yet. I'll have to do some checking on a few things. She may be too risky to peddle out on the open market, which leaves her to just a few fences that I know that handle this kind of thing." Human trafficking isn't Elle's forte, really. She knows people in the slavery business and isn't adverse to dealing with them, no matter how repulsive they are to most people.
"Most likely, it all depends on what she knows, or what we can find out about her," Elle muses as she returns to her seat, allowing the surviving members of the recovery team to get Elfa to safety. Elle seems relatively unconcerned with the girl. As long as she's still alive.
A lost PDA isn't a problem. "If you want a replacement for that old thing, there should be some in the gear box in the third tent over." For an organization like Elle's, communications is the most important part of the job. Without proper information flow, they're all dead, and thanks to naerose, Elle is always up to date with the latest technological innovations and other gadgetry. If there's a consumer good out there, odds are there's a military version that outclasses it somewhere, and Elle knows what strings to pull to get that.
"But we got what we came for, and a little bit extra. All I did was lose about forty grand in soldiers, which was what i sort of expected to lose anyhow."
Ayame listens to Elle's remarks about the discovered girl, looking somewhere between somewhat interested and entirely uninterested. She can be difficult to read when her mind is reeling with a number of things to consider at the same time. But what really catches her attention is mention of a replacement PDA available right there in the camp. Now that's more like it!
"Right," she replies with a bit of a grin as Elle mentions the 'burn rate' for this mission. Just a bunch of people too slow to survive a day longer in her book, she'll shed neither tear nor even a second thinking about them at all. Just business to the girl.
"Well, hollar if you need me," she states with a wave over her shoulder as she turns to walk away briskly, directly for the indicated tent. She'll take a couple of those PDAs... newer tech by a few years, they'll make for great starting points to implement her own custom modifications to. She can definitely work with this arrangement to say the least.
COMBATSYS: Aislinn has ended the fight here.
Log created on 21:40:31 11/18/2007 by Elfa, and last modified on 10:28:23 11/19/2007.