I was supposed to be working today....
Nano Sabre's origin has been bugging me, and today it finally came out of its hiding place. This is not quite finished
-- there's another bit needed to flesh out how she hooks up with Riot Force and the other Sabres -- but this is the majority of it here. I'll add the
rest after I have a chance to speak with the folks involved.
Wiregeek, Ankhani (?), Foxboy: please speak up if I've mischaracterized your peeps.
Sabres of Paragon
Nano Sabre
The facility is dark and quiet at this time of night. Almost everybody, from the lab technicians in their white-coated facelessness to the security guards in
their vast array of gear, has retired -- to barracks, to their homes, or to enjoy the nightlife; it doesn't matter which. The halls are empty for a short
while, with nothing but the gentle sigh of air conditioners and the occasional beep or hum of automatic machinery to break the silence, and the occasional late
worker or roaming patrol guard.
A sudden gasp of fear sounds from behind one of the many doors lining this particular hallway. Inside the room, a young woman -- athletic, trim, with brown
hair and eyes and a worried expression on her face -- sits up suddenly from a deep sleep, draws the sheet up around her neck, and peers into the darkness. She
has no clue where she is. Her vision compensates for the low light levels automatically, bringing the room into gritty grayscale clarity; it's a lab of
some sort, with her as the central occupant. Computer equipment lines the walls, workstations and micro-machining gear vying for space with medical equipment
and cabinets. The bed she rests on is a lab table, and is festooned with wires and cables, many of which are attached to her at her head, wrists and ankles.
She ignores them for the moment, staring around in confusion.
"H-hello?" she says fearfully. Her memories are a jumble; she can recall the face of a man in a white coat leaning over her -- a doctor, perhaps? --
and before that, a wild confusion of images: metal corridors, security robots, explosions, and several women, each distinct in their own way, and all of them
her friends.
All of them... dead?
A rush of memory floods back to her. GENOM. The Genaros station. The attempt at escape, and the sudden, deadly intervention of security BUMA. She remembers
a violent crash and a flight through a forest in a stolen advanced combat robot, with a dying friend at her side.
"Anri!" The name leaps from her lips, though nobody responds.
She looks around, and spots a company logo stamped on the side of a testing unit. "Crey Industries," it reads, and she frowns. The high-tech
environs remind her of nothing so much as the Genaros station, or before that, the GENOM manufacturing facility.
"That must be it," she says quietly, eyes narrowing. "They must have caught us, this 'Crey' is a GENOM front."
If she had been caught, Anri has to be close by.
A noise in the hallway attracts her attention, and she focuses on it. Her ears amplify what was faint and it becomes clear. It is a man -- roughly thirty
years old and slightly overweight judging by heart rate and respiration -- talking to someone on a radio or telephone. There's nobody else in the hall
with him.
"... and I said, I said, 'Listen, Jerry, we don't have TIME for that crap'. What? No." He pauses to pull something from his pocket --
the rustle of plastic on cloth is as clear to her as if he was standing right next to her. "So, anyway. I can't sleep. I'm going to keep
fiddling with the Scimitar project tonight. It's not just Smithers' head on the line, you know how SHE is. Yeah, ok. G'bye." There's a
beep and a click, followed by a series of beeps from the door.
Quickly and silently she lays back down and closes her eyes. Her ears track the man to the millimeter as the door locks disengage with a series of thunks and
he pushes it open. He steps inside and shuts the door, flicks on the lights, hangs his lab coat on the rack next to the door, and turns to face her. She sits
up. He lets out a startled curse and whirls for the master panel. She notes that her systems don't seem to be functioning at full capacity -- he should
have been mesmerized the instant she locked gazes with him -- and launches herself from the table, snapping the connecting wires in an instant and crashing
heavily down on his back, driving him to the floor, grabbing the back of his head and forcing his face into the tiles. His outstretched hand misses the panic
button by mere inches, and she grabs his wrist with her other hand, placing her fingers in precise positions. Then she flexes her wrist, just a little bit,
bending his trapped hand. Just hard enough to get his attention.
He yelps again as a spike of white-hot agony shoots up his arm. She knows what it feels like.
"Shut up and don't move," she commands. "Or I'll -break- it."
He subsides, save for muffled grunts as the uncomfortable position makes it difficult for him to breathe.
"Where's Anri? Where am I?" she says.
He turns his head with difficulty, and she lets him, though she keeps one hand wound in his hair for leverage. His eyes are wild with fury and fear, and a
thin trickle of blood is running from his smashed nose. "Stand down, unit six! Code Scimitar, authorization Van Houten twelve!"
She blinks as a buried bit of code swims up through her awareness. She marvels at the crudity of the attempt -- the program is attempting to shut down her
motor systems directly, the equivalent of trying to stop a car by yanking directly on the brake cables. Her defenses engage and crush it utterly in the space
of a thought, and she narrows her eyes at the Crey technician, whose face, for some reason, seems oddly familiar to her, in a sort of negative
where-have-I-seen-you-before way.
"If that's the best you've got, you're not much of a threat," she says mildly, and he turns pale. "Now, one more time: Where. Is.
Anri?"
"I don't know who that is," he says, gritting his teeth. "You're malfunctioning, unit six. Who is Anri, for Christ's sake?!"
She glares at him... then stands abruptly, dragging him to his feet by his hair and winding his trapped arm up behind his back. She ignores his protests and
slams him down into one of the office chairs, then begins to twist the sheet from the lab table into a crude rope. He makes an attempt to break free and she
kicks him, hard, in a place where it really really hurts those of the male persuasion. He flails around, clutching at himself, and has the bad judgement to
try to punch her. The dance ends with him tied into the chair, unconscious, while she goes through his pockets.
It is the usual collection of junk -- wallet, cellphone, keys, keycard-slash-ID badge proclaiming him to be one "VAN HOUTEN, Kirk", a Senior Research
Scientist with Class-A clearance. There's also a pen, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and loose change. She tosses it all on the table and pokes
around the room, opening and peering into cabinets, testing drawers, that sort of thing. It is during this time that she finds, hanging neatly in a tall
cabinet, a skin-tight suit obviously tailored for her dimensions. It's more revealing than she prefers, but less revealing than what she is wearing now,
which is to say, nothing at all, so she puts it on.
A few moments of fiddling release the bracelets from her wrists and ankles. She follows the wires back from the table through cable runs affixed to the wall
and finds the terminal they're attached to. It is dark, but a wave over the surface brings it to life. The display is cluttered with more information
than she knows what to do with, but some of it stands out. Project Scimitar. Prototype Unit 6, codename "Sylvie". And blinking in the lower corner
of the display are the words "LAB MONITORS DISABLED".
Poking at the terminal accomplishes nothing beyond getting a "Login:" prompt, which is useless to her, so she leaves it and continues her search.
Most of the contents in the room are interesting in a clinical way, but not very useful. Then she comes across the tech's lab coat. Its contents are more
interesting, if that's the proper word: personal lubricant, a rolled up and well-worn magazine of the porn variety, and a set of six snapshots.
Of her. In this very room. With him... doing things to her that she has no memory of, but which explain his uneasy familiarity.
She scowls at his unconscious form. It would be easy to kill him, and he was more deserving of it than most that she'd had to kill before if the pictures
were any indication, but she needs information more than she does vengeance right now. So she adds the pictures to the pile, drops the magazine and lube into
the trashbin, tries to suppress the shudder as the memory of his face leering over hers comes back to the forefront, and moves on to the last wall, which has a
large, heavy, locked cabinet between the workstations and the drug cabinets. She swipes the tech's badge through the card reader and steps back as the
doors puff a bit of what looks like steam into the air and slowly, ponderously swing open.
Inside there's an armored suit standing neatly, supported by padding, colored a dark forest green with white and silver highlights. She stares at it for a
moment, then her systems register an incoming data transmission. She acknowledges it.
It's a handshake, the computer equivalent of how-do-you-do, from the suit. It has recognized its operator. As she watches, it comes online and unfolds,
opening out of the cabinet and blossoming like a flower. Part of her is apprehensive, but somehow it just feels -right- that she should climb in. So she
does. She's never worn it before, she knows that, but it feels like coming home. The suit folds closed around her, cushioning her entire body, and comes
online with a cheery hum. It feels like piloting -- becoming -- the D.D. battlemover all over again, except without the intrusive whispering of the J-1 battle
computer watching her every move.
"... ah, -shit-."
It's Van Houten, who has regained consciousness. He stares at her.
"Are you ready to talk now?" she inquires mildly. She's not yet wearing the helmet -- it's still in the cabinet -- and that makes it easier
to meet his eyes. She flexes the manipulators on her gauntlets.
"You're not supposed to be online," he finally says, in the resigned tone of a man who is convinced he's hallucinating.
"And I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to be sneaking in here to get your rocks off," she fires back, indicating the pictures on the table.
He looks, and winces, and it's obvious from his expression that he very much regrets, now, ever having taken the pictures in the first place.
"So talk, Mr. Van Houten," she says, putting as much of an edge in her voice as she can. "And be honest. Where am I?"
He stares at her for a moment, then sighs. "Look, can I ask a question first?"
She narrows her eyes at him, then nods.
"Who are you? Or, rather, who do you -think- you are?"
"I'm Sylvie," she says. "I'd give you my unit number, but I don't know you that well," she adds with a sneer. He winces
again, but plows on.
"Well, uh, Sylvie... you're in a research lab. You're a robot; we built you. And, I'm sorry to say, you're malfunctioning."
"I'm not a robot."
"Yes, you are," he retorts. "My God, just look at yourself. You're interfacing with that suit right now, you have to be or it wouldn't
be online. You responded to my override command -- not the right way, but it triggered something, at least. You are a -robot-." He sighs. "And
you need to let us help you."
"I am not a robot!" she yells.
"Okay, okay," He leans back in his chair as much as his bonds permit. "Tell me, though; what do you remember before waking up here?"
She scowls at him. "Besides you, you mean?"
"Uh... yes."
"I remember a space station, and friends of mine. We were running, and they were dying."
He nods. "Yes. And you fled in a stolen shuttle."
She stares at him. "How do you --?"
"And you crashed, and you took the battle robot and fled the scene." He shakes his head. "It's all implanted memories, Six. None of it
really happened. We just built you a few days ago."
Tears are flowing, now, down her cheeks. She can feel them. "But ... I'm a -person-, I'm not some dumb robot!"
"I'm sorry, Six. You are not the Sylvie you remember." His face takes on a sorrowful air. "Please, untie me. We'll help you, I
promise."
"No! I don't -- I can't... I don't believe you!"
"My God, you're actually crying," he says, wonder evident in his voice. "I mean... spontaneous emotional response? That's
impossible!"
"Shut up, you bastard!" she cries.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! It's just... I mean..." he shakes his head. "Six -- Sylvie, sorry -- if I'd known that... oh
hell." Suddenly he looks very tired. "We don't understand the technology that built you. We thought -- I thought -- you were regular robots,
just... more advanced. We were supposed to implant memories and personalities on you so that you could perform some, ah, tasks for us."
She glares at him, but says nothing.
"If I'd known... I mean... I'm sorry."
"That's nowhere near good enough, and you know it," she responds.
He looks sick. "I know." He closes his eyes for a moment. Then his head snaps up. "Listen. I'm going to make this right. I don't
know how, but I will."
"I don't believe you."
"I don't expect you to. I can't explain it, but somehow the memory implant must have triggered something, buried in the parts we don't yet
understand. I swear, until tonight you were as alive as a piece of steel. We started the memory dump this afternoon, and it had just completed before we left
for the night. In those few hours... you came to life."
He wiggles a bit in his chair, grimacing. His hands have turned red from the blood trapped there by the bonds around his wrists, but he says nothing about
them.
"The others are out there, your friends," he says finally. Her head snaps up.
"What?!"
"I don't know where, or what prototype or codename they're using, or anything. Security is pretty tight here. But I know that we're building
them. The whole point of Project Scimitar -- you -- was to recapture the the four originals who escaped. Your friend Priss is one of them."
"Priss?! I thought you said none of my memories were real!"
"It is, and it isn't. It's hard to explain." He frowns, thinking. "Sylvie is from an alternate universe. She is dead. Your memories
were her life, pieced together from data we stole from that place. But she really existed there, as did the friends you remember. With me so far?"
"Y... yes."
"There were others that were stolen -- we call them the Rogues. Like Priss. They escaped and are free here in this universe, now. And I ... I think you
need to find them."
She stares at him in shock. "But--"
"I've done terrible things to you, I know," he says. "And I don't expect you to forgive me. But... my -God-, look at you! You're
-alive-! I don't know how, I don't understand it, it makes no sense... but you are a person, and -I- helped create you. I can't let that be
destroyed... which is what will happen if you stay here."
She looks at him suspiciously. "How do I know you're not lying to me now?"
"You don't!" he exclaims. "But you don't have a choice, either. The patrol will be coming by any time now, and they check every lab --
it's like an obsession with them, they never miss anything -- so if you stay here, you're -dead-." He grins, just a little. "Whether
I'm here or not won't make a difference to them... if they find you here, now, without having gone through the start-up process we'd planned...
you're dead. If I get caught in the crossfire... well, they've got other scientists."
He's right, she realizes. Regardless of anything else, she can't stay here. And if the others are out there....
"Okay." She grabs the helmet and puts it on. Cool air washes her face, drying the last of the tears, as the environmental systems come online. She
looks at Van Houten.
"Go," he says. "I'll be okay."
"Unfortunately," she mutters. He has the grace to look embarrassed.
"Left outside the door, straight to the third intersection, right, right, up to the top floor, left again, and hit that door running," he says.
"That's the maintenance garage and if you can make it there without setting off the alarms, you'll only have a regular rolling door to bust
through. If you -do- set off the alarms..." he shrugs. "God help you."
She checks the last of her systems with an ease that implies long familiarity, even though she's never done this before, and heads out the door, following
Van Houten's instructions.
Anri... Priss... she thinks. I'm coming. I'll find you.
-----\
Kirk Van Houten eyes the clock above the door. Three minutes since Unit Six -- Sylvie -- left the room. He wheels himself over to the lab table and, through
a variety of contortions that he never would have guessed he'd have been able to do, picks up the pictures in his teeth and drops them down the incinerator
chute.
Seven minutes.
He noses through his coat but finds nothing. He looks around the rest of the room, finds the other evidence in the trash, and manages to bend over enough to
get the bag in his teeth. He drags that to the chute and burns it as well.
Ten minutes.
He ponders the reversals of fate and the vagaries of conscience. Then he sighs. "Ah, fuck it," he says aloud. "I'm no use to anyone dead.
Here's hoping you made it, kid."
So saying, he wheels himself over to the master panel, looks one more time at the clock, then smashes his forehead down on the big red button.
Twelve minutes.
-----\
Sylvie is one minute and eight seconds, at her current rate of progress, from the maintenance garage and (hopefully) freedom, when the corridor lights up red,
alarm klaxons begin to sound, and large doors close off the archway that she has to pass through next.
Her suit echoes the alarm, helpfully throwing a display up that indicates that an intrusion has been logged in the research wing. She clears it absently and
ducks down behind a stack of canisters. She has not yet figured out how to activate the weapons systems, which is a problem. The suit has databanks that
contain many useful and fascinating details about the radiation projectors and nanocloud projectors built in to her gauntlets, and if she had time to read it
all she'd probably enjoy it, but it is badly organized and is not yet up to any sort of useful standard. And it does not appear to contain the activation
codes, which is what her suit is politely requesting of her every time she pulls the trigger. It is frustrating, to say the least, but she pushes it aside and
tries to think outside the box.
A squad approaches, consisting of ... well, they look a little like 55-Cs, she muses, with the blue armor and all, but the suit tags them as several Crey Cryo
Tanks and two Crey Field Agents. Whatever they are, they don't look friendly, and the agents resemble nothing so much to her as 55-Cs in disguise --
bulging muscles, bad suits, sunglasses, and all. She remains motionless behind the tanks as they jog by.
She pokes around a bit more in the suit's systems -- the mental equivalent of frantically rummaging through a toolbox looking for something you can't
remember but you'll know it when you see it -- and realizes that it has a built-in communications array, helpfully labeled with Crey frequencies, as well
as broadcast frequencies for other things. She doesn't want to call attention to herself, so she shuts off the Crey bits. Then she opens the others up
and blinks as a cascade, a veritable torrent, of information starts pouring in.
It is, in a word, a -madhouse- of transmissions out there. She doesn't know where to begin. There are police reports; there are people chattering on
about their lives; there are advertisements; there are even suggestive flirtations and a few out-and-out propositions. It's nuts. But because she has no
choice, and because she can hear another set of tanks marching her way, she quickly narrows it down to a channel that seems to be in use by people nearby
(judging by signal strength), and who are apparently discussing the intricacies of football scoring.
"Hello?" she whispers frantically. "Can anybody hear me?"
There is a pause, and a voice comes back. "Yes we can. What's up?" It's a friendly voice, big and joking, and does not sound startled at
all that a random girl out of nowhere has just dropped into his conversation.
"I'm trapped in a research lab, they've been holding me prisoner. The alarms are going off and security is looking for me and I need some
help!"
When it comes across the airwaves again, the voice is deadly serious. "You'll get it. Hang on; I'm passing the word. We'll get you out of
there." There is a click, then silence.
It is rather startling when, a few moments later, her HUD lights up with a request, coming in over a secured band, to initiate something called
'cooperative networking mode'. The message is tagged with an unfamiliar name; crossing her fingers (the suit echoes her movements), she acknowledges
and accepts.
A window appears, with two names in it: Wide Receiver and Mag Flashlight. Voices erupt in mid-sentence:
"--uck down here, Wide. Contact Riot Force, I think they have someone in that area."
The man who spoke earlier speaks again -- she recognizes his voice. "Mag's on it, thanks, Min." His attention shifts -- how she can tell,
she's not sure -- and his next question is directed at her. "How you holdin' out?"
"A bit worried," she says honestly. "They're looking for me and I just saw two more patrols go by."
"We're on our way," he assures her. Another name appears in the list -- Swift Sabre -- and a breathless female voice enters the conversation.
"I'm here!"
A different male voice intrudes. Sylvie notices the names lighting and dimming each time one speaks. If that's accurate, this would be the one called Mag
Flashlight. "We're almost to your location. Did you know your research lab is an abandoned warehouse?" She can hear the sounds of his
breathing and what sounds like traffic in the background.
"... no?" she replies after a moment. How to answer that? "Where are you?" she adds.
"Accordin' to this, we're right over you."
She looks up, and freezes. A Crey Field Agent is peering over the stack of canisters. He has a submachinegun -- her HUD helpfully identifies it as a Crey
Model 7 Adv, whatever that means -- pointed at her head. He smiles. "I found it!" he calls over his shoulder.
"Now would be a -really- good time," she gulps.
"You got it," replies Mag, and the ceiling suddenly begins to crackle. Frost spreads over its surface like a stop-motion film, rapidly coating a
circle roughly ten feet in diameter in ice. Fog begins to form and snake downwards.
Then, with a crumbling roar, it shatters and falls to the floor. That gets everyone's attention quickly; the Crey Tanks (there's more than the cryo
variety, now, she notices) spread out and turn to face this new threat; the multitude of field agents rushing towards her stop in their tracks. Even the one
with the gun pointed at her head takes notice, stepping back and turning sideways to keep her covered while still being able to see. She rises to her feet --
they found her anyway, and she'd rather be able to run if needed -- and waits.
Through the swirling dust and fog, three figures appear at the lip of the hole. Two of them look like walking bridge abutments; they are as wide as they are
tall, wearing blue and gold colors, but there the similarity ends. One appears to be a football player, of all things, and the other is wearing a
constantly-shifting suit of ice, through which his armor can barely be seen. Swift Sabre -- she assumes it's Swift, since the others are very definitely
male -- stands to one side, with a drawn katana and a ready stance. Sylvie's eyes widen as she gets a look; while there are definite differences,
Swift's armor appears very similar to her own.
"ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?!!" Wide Reciever roars, his voice so loud it reverberates throughout the entire room. Then he leans over, picks up
Mag Flashlight, and without so much as a by-your-leave hurls him like a football into the densest cluster of Crey troops in the room.
Sylvie hears a startled "What the -- yikes!" over the comm, but other than that there's no indication it wasn't rehearsed. Mag impacts a
Crey Power Tank feet-first, knocking it down and sending it skidding several feet away, and rebounds to his feet lightly. She sees a grin light up his face,
and then the view is obscured by a blast of super-cold air that instantly fogs that entire half of the room over. The sounds of combat erupt from within.
Wide Reciever leaps from the hole, landing on another group of Crey. Several of them simply collapse, driven to the ground by a blow of his anvil-like fists.
He lays into the crowd around him, each strike felling a Crey operative. A tank here, an agent there; it makes no difference. He doesn't appear to be
affected by, or even notice, the sheer volume of firepower being directed his way. Sylvie can only stand and watch in awe.
"Whoever you are! Up here!" Swift is waving at her from the hole in the cieling. "C'mon, while they keep them busy!"
Sylvie blinks and decides that's probably a good idea. She ducks around the canisters, dodges a flying Field Agent who is encrusted with ice and wearing
an unhappy expression, jumps lightly onto the rubble pile that was a ceiling, and looks up at Swift Sabre some twenty feet above.
"I can't jump that high," she says. Her best effort produces a meager five feet, and her suit is informing her that her thruster jets are
offline.
"Mag! Can you get her out of there?" Swift calls.
"BUSY!" Mag replies. The fog has mostly settled. Around him Crey operatives lie in various states of frozen-ness. Some are merely shivering and
blue, still attempting to fight but moving slowly; others are frozen solid, mouths open in silent screams. A few appear to have avoided the worst of it, and
it is these that Mag is trading blows with. Every punch he lands erupts with frost; every blow they land on him is accompanied by the crackle of ice. It
appears that he is winning, but it will take some time.
This observation is of course the cue for more Crey troops to arrive, which they do, pouring down the hall in a tidal wave of fury.
"Penalty: too many men on the field," Wide mutters, to which Mag replies with a snort. Wide lays down a particularly vicious blow, knocking several
Crey flat, then tackles the new arrivals -- literally, opening his arms wide and flinging himself into their midst. He is instantly buried under a writhing
mass of Field Agent and Tank.
Swift drops down through the hole and lands next to Sylvie. "Which way is out?" she demands, cutting down an operative who wanders too close.
"There," Sylvie says, pointing at the doors between this room and the maintenance garage. A man in a lab apron and goggles is standing there -- the
HUD thinks for a moment and tags him as a Research Assistant, question mark -- and spots her. He raises his pistol and fires. The blue bolt of whatever
sizzles past her ear, and frost covers that half of her facebowl for a moment. She stumbles and falls, flinging her arm out to catch her balance, and wishes
mightily that she had a weapon.
A new message appears in her HUD. "TASER READY", it blinks, then shrinks to an icon at the side.
What the hell, it can't hurt. The icon is superimposed over a wireframe model of her suit, on the arm; she extends it and pulls the trigger. Twin darts
leap out and pass on either side of the research assistant's head, embedding themselves in the wall behind him. A split-second later the charge erupts and
sizzles down the wires. The research assistant now has an afro, but is unharmed and unamused. He levels his cryo pistol for another shot and is promptly
body-slammed into the wall by a thrown Power Tank.
"Bad assistant, no donut!" Mag shouts, dusting his hands off. He takes a step forward and is hit from three sides by torrents of raw energy.
Lightning crackles and sizzles off his armor, grounding itself out on the floor and dancing over the bodies piled around him. Voltaic Tanks charge forward,
and almost as one slip and fall on an ice slick that wasn't there a moment before. Mag spreads his hands in a 'what can you do?' gesture and dives
back into the fray.
Swift works the edges -- a thrust here, a swipe there, never in the same place for more than a second. She is (very) lightly armored compared to the two
tank-like members of the team, but seems to make up for it by simply getting the hell out of the way whenever anything attacks her. And it's not like
she's under attack much; Mag and Wide have between them managed to attract the attention of everything in the room.
Unfortunately, Crey seems to have a limitless supply of reinforcements, a point which is driven home by the arrival of yet another half-dozen squads through
the other intersecting corridor.
"Wide!" Mag calls, turning a Voltaic Tank into an ice sculpture.
"What!?" is the response. The mass of Crey shifts and erupts, scattering bodies everywhere, and Wide stands up.
"Keep them busy for a minute?"
"Sure, no problem!" The momentary silence is shattered by a battle cry as Wide Receiver gathers himself, one hand splayed on the ground, knees bent,
shoulders tucked, and seems to explode forward like a human wrecking ball. His trajectory is marked by falling bodies as he plows into a blue-and-gold clad
figure who had been at the center of the mob -- a Paragon Protector, it appears. The two men hit the wall at an angle, bounce off, and roll into the stack of
canisters, sending steel bottles flying.
Mag rolls his shoulders, flexes his fingers, pops his neck. He relights his cigar and strides towards the armor doors keeping them from the maintenance bay,
pausing only long enough to pat an unconscious Cryo Tank on the head. "Nice try," he says, "but you need to work on that follow-through."
He reaches Sylvie, tips an invisble hat -- "Ma'am," -- and stands in front of the door, eyeing it momentarily.
"They haven't changed," he mutters incomprehensibly, then puts the cigar back in his mouth and extends his hands to the sides, flexing his
fingers in an intricate pattern. Then he puts one hand flat against the door, looks at Sylvie, and says, "Count to ten."
"Huh?" she replies.
"Ten? Count to it." Mag grins.
"One, two, three..." Sylvie begins to count. Swift glides past her with a muttered "Excuse me," skewers the arm of a Crey agent who was
drawing a bead on Mag, and vanishes back into the swirling fray, flashes of light from her blade and the cries of the fallen the only indication of her
passage.
".. eight, nine, ten?"
Mag steps away from the wall, taps some ashes off his cigar, and grabs an agent by his collar as he stumbles away from Wide Receiver's fist. "Hey,
buddy, gimme a hand here?"
"Huh?" the agent replies, somewhat muddily.
"Thanks!" Mag exclaims, and slams the agent into the door face-first. There is a deep, booming crack as the super-cooled metal gives way, followed
by a roar as it collapses to the ground.
"TOUCHDOWN!" Wide crows, and absently backhands an agent who is, it appears to Sylvie, attempting to figure out which way the room is spinning. The
man gives up the confusing mental struggle and proceeds to take a nap on the cold wet floor.
"Everyone outta the pool," Mag quips. "Ladies first!"
"No argument here," Swift says, dodging a blast of frost from the Crey side of the room and sheathing her katana. "C'mon, let's
go," she adds, tugging on Sylvie's arm. They stumble over the collapsed ruins of the door and dash through the garage towards the man-door to the
right of the rolling steel door leading outside.
"What about them?" Sylvie asks as they reach the exit.
"They'll catch up when they're done playing," Swift replies. They emerge into a rubble-strewn alleyway. Bright blue walls of energy rise in
the distance, bathing a city of old brick and industrial concrete in their glow.
"I don't think I'm in Tokyo any more," Sylvie whispers to herself, awed. Swift looks at her and appears to really notice her for the first
time; a shocked gasp comes across the communications link.
"You... you look like...!"
"We'd better talk this over later, ladies," Mag says as he turns sideways and steps through the door. "It's REALLY time we got outta
here; they're sounding the evac alarm in there, which means all hell's about to break loose."
Wide Receiver steps through the doorway, not bothering to turn; his shoulders crumble brick. "Less talk more run," he says, jerking a thumb back the
way they came. "Clock's about to run out."
"Pardon me, miss," Mag says, and scoops Sylvie into his arms. And then she's flying.
Well, that's what it feels like, anyway. Mag arcs high over the city in a single bound, touches down on a rooftop, jumps again. In thirty seconds
they're so far away she has lost sight of the building they came from. Conveniently, it reveals itself by burping a fireball out of the hole in the roof.
Her suit informs her that it is no longer receiving any Crey transmissions from its designated source and asks if she would like it to attempt to reconnect;
she hastily cancels that and tells it no way in hell.
Then, because it's been a long day already, even though her status monitor tells her she's only been awake a couple of hours, she decides to take a
nap.
-----\
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Nano Sabre's origin has been bugging me, and today it finally came out of its hiding place. This is not quite finished
-- there's another bit needed to flesh out how she hooks up with Riot Force and the other Sabres -- but this is the majority of it here. I'll add the
rest after I have a chance to speak with the folks involved.
Wiregeek, Ankhani (?), Foxboy: please speak up if I've mischaracterized your peeps.
Sabres of Paragon
Nano Sabre
The facility is dark and quiet at this time of night. Almost everybody, from the lab technicians in their white-coated facelessness to the security guards in
their vast array of gear, has retired -- to barracks, to their homes, or to enjoy the nightlife; it doesn't matter which. The halls are empty for a short
while, with nothing but the gentle sigh of air conditioners and the occasional beep or hum of automatic machinery to break the silence, and the occasional late
worker or roaming patrol guard.
A sudden gasp of fear sounds from behind one of the many doors lining this particular hallway. Inside the room, a young woman -- athletic, trim, with brown
hair and eyes and a worried expression on her face -- sits up suddenly from a deep sleep, draws the sheet up around her neck, and peers into the darkness. She
has no clue where she is. Her vision compensates for the low light levels automatically, bringing the room into gritty grayscale clarity; it's a lab of
some sort, with her as the central occupant. Computer equipment lines the walls, workstations and micro-machining gear vying for space with medical equipment
and cabinets. The bed she rests on is a lab table, and is festooned with wires and cables, many of which are attached to her at her head, wrists and ankles.
She ignores them for the moment, staring around in confusion.
"H-hello?" she says fearfully. Her memories are a jumble; she can recall the face of a man in a white coat leaning over her -- a doctor, perhaps? --
and before that, a wild confusion of images: metal corridors, security robots, explosions, and several women, each distinct in their own way, and all of them
her friends.
All of them... dead?
A rush of memory floods back to her. GENOM. The Genaros station. The attempt at escape, and the sudden, deadly intervention of security BUMA. She remembers
a violent crash and a flight through a forest in a stolen advanced combat robot, with a dying friend at her side.
"Anri!" The name leaps from her lips, though nobody responds.
She looks around, and spots a company logo stamped on the side of a testing unit. "Crey Industries," it reads, and she frowns. The high-tech
environs remind her of nothing so much as the Genaros station, or before that, the GENOM manufacturing facility.
"That must be it," she says quietly, eyes narrowing. "They must have caught us, this 'Crey' is a GENOM front."
If she had been caught, Anri has to be close by.
A noise in the hallway attracts her attention, and she focuses on it. Her ears amplify what was faint and it becomes clear. It is a man -- roughly thirty
years old and slightly overweight judging by heart rate and respiration -- talking to someone on a radio or telephone. There's nobody else in the hall
with him.
"... and I said, I said, 'Listen, Jerry, we don't have TIME for that crap'. What? No." He pauses to pull something from his pocket --
the rustle of plastic on cloth is as clear to her as if he was standing right next to her. "So, anyway. I can't sleep. I'm going to keep
fiddling with the Scimitar project tonight. It's not just Smithers' head on the line, you know how SHE is. Yeah, ok. G'bye." There's a
beep and a click, followed by a series of beeps from the door.
Quickly and silently she lays back down and closes her eyes. Her ears track the man to the millimeter as the door locks disengage with a series of thunks and
he pushes it open. He steps inside and shuts the door, flicks on the lights, hangs his lab coat on the rack next to the door, and turns to face her. She sits
up. He lets out a startled curse and whirls for the master panel. She notes that her systems don't seem to be functioning at full capacity -- he should
have been mesmerized the instant she locked gazes with him -- and launches herself from the table, snapping the connecting wires in an instant and crashing
heavily down on his back, driving him to the floor, grabbing the back of his head and forcing his face into the tiles. His outstretched hand misses the panic
button by mere inches, and she grabs his wrist with her other hand, placing her fingers in precise positions. Then she flexes her wrist, just a little bit,
bending his trapped hand. Just hard enough to get his attention.
He yelps again as a spike of white-hot agony shoots up his arm. She knows what it feels like.
"Shut up and don't move," she commands. "Or I'll -break- it."
He subsides, save for muffled grunts as the uncomfortable position makes it difficult for him to breathe.
"Where's Anri? Where am I?" she says.
He turns his head with difficulty, and she lets him, though she keeps one hand wound in his hair for leverage. His eyes are wild with fury and fear, and a
thin trickle of blood is running from his smashed nose. "Stand down, unit six! Code Scimitar, authorization Van Houten twelve!"
She blinks as a buried bit of code swims up through her awareness. She marvels at the crudity of the attempt -- the program is attempting to shut down her
motor systems directly, the equivalent of trying to stop a car by yanking directly on the brake cables. Her defenses engage and crush it utterly in the space
of a thought, and she narrows her eyes at the Crey technician, whose face, for some reason, seems oddly familiar to her, in a sort of negative
where-have-I-seen-you-before way.
"If that's the best you've got, you're not much of a threat," she says mildly, and he turns pale. "Now, one more time: Where. Is.
Anri?"
"I don't know who that is," he says, gritting his teeth. "You're malfunctioning, unit six. Who is Anri, for Christ's sake?!"
She glares at him... then stands abruptly, dragging him to his feet by his hair and winding his trapped arm up behind his back. She ignores his protests and
slams him down into one of the office chairs, then begins to twist the sheet from the lab table into a crude rope. He makes an attempt to break free and she
kicks him, hard, in a place where it really really hurts those of the male persuasion. He flails around, clutching at himself, and has the bad judgement to
try to punch her. The dance ends with him tied into the chair, unconscious, while she goes through his pockets.
It is the usual collection of junk -- wallet, cellphone, keys, keycard-slash-ID badge proclaiming him to be one "VAN HOUTEN, Kirk", a Senior Research
Scientist with Class-A clearance. There's also a pen, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and loose change. She tosses it all on the table and pokes
around the room, opening and peering into cabinets, testing drawers, that sort of thing. It is during this time that she finds, hanging neatly in a tall
cabinet, a skin-tight suit obviously tailored for her dimensions. It's more revealing than she prefers, but less revealing than what she is wearing now,
which is to say, nothing at all, so she puts it on.
A few moments of fiddling release the bracelets from her wrists and ankles. She follows the wires back from the table through cable runs affixed to the wall
and finds the terminal they're attached to. It is dark, but a wave over the surface brings it to life. The display is cluttered with more information
than she knows what to do with, but some of it stands out. Project Scimitar. Prototype Unit 6, codename "Sylvie". And blinking in the lower corner
of the display are the words "LAB MONITORS DISABLED".
Poking at the terminal accomplishes nothing beyond getting a "Login:" prompt, which is useless to her, so she leaves it and continues her search.
Most of the contents in the room are interesting in a clinical way, but not very useful. Then she comes across the tech's lab coat. Its contents are more
interesting, if that's the proper word: personal lubricant, a rolled up and well-worn magazine of the porn variety, and a set of six snapshots.
Of her. In this very room. With him... doing things to her that she has no memory of, but which explain his uneasy familiarity.
She scowls at his unconscious form. It would be easy to kill him, and he was more deserving of it than most that she'd had to kill before if the pictures
were any indication, but she needs information more than she does vengeance right now. So she adds the pictures to the pile, drops the magazine and lube into
the trashbin, tries to suppress the shudder as the memory of his face leering over hers comes back to the forefront, and moves on to the last wall, which has a
large, heavy, locked cabinet between the workstations and the drug cabinets. She swipes the tech's badge through the card reader and steps back as the
doors puff a bit of what looks like steam into the air and slowly, ponderously swing open.
Inside there's an armored suit standing neatly, supported by padding, colored a dark forest green with white and silver highlights. She stares at it for a
moment, then her systems register an incoming data transmission. She acknowledges it.
It's a handshake, the computer equivalent of how-do-you-do, from the suit. It has recognized its operator. As she watches, it comes online and unfolds,
opening out of the cabinet and blossoming like a flower. Part of her is apprehensive, but somehow it just feels -right- that she should climb in. So she
does. She's never worn it before, she knows that, but it feels like coming home. The suit folds closed around her, cushioning her entire body, and comes
online with a cheery hum. It feels like piloting -- becoming -- the D.D. battlemover all over again, except without the intrusive whispering of the J-1 battle
computer watching her every move.
"... ah, -shit-."
It's Van Houten, who has regained consciousness. He stares at her.
"Are you ready to talk now?" she inquires mildly. She's not yet wearing the helmet -- it's still in the cabinet -- and that makes it easier
to meet his eyes. She flexes the manipulators on her gauntlets.
"You're not supposed to be online," he finally says, in the resigned tone of a man who is convinced he's hallucinating.
"And I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to be sneaking in here to get your rocks off," she fires back, indicating the pictures on the table.
He looks, and winces, and it's obvious from his expression that he very much regrets, now, ever having taken the pictures in the first place.
"So talk, Mr. Van Houten," she says, putting as much of an edge in her voice as she can. "And be honest. Where am I?"
He stares at her for a moment, then sighs. "Look, can I ask a question first?"
She narrows her eyes at him, then nods.
"Who are you? Or, rather, who do you -think- you are?"
"I'm Sylvie," she says. "I'd give you my unit number, but I don't know you that well," she adds with a sneer. He winces
again, but plows on.
"Well, uh, Sylvie... you're in a research lab. You're a robot; we built you. And, I'm sorry to say, you're malfunctioning."
"I'm not a robot."
"Yes, you are," he retorts. "My God, just look at yourself. You're interfacing with that suit right now, you have to be or it wouldn't
be online. You responded to my override command -- not the right way, but it triggered something, at least. You are a -robot-." He sighs. "And
you need to let us help you."
"I am not a robot!" she yells.
"Okay, okay," He leans back in his chair as much as his bonds permit. "Tell me, though; what do you remember before waking up here?"
She scowls at him. "Besides you, you mean?"
"Uh... yes."
"I remember a space station, and friends of mine. We were running, and they were dying."
He nods. "Yes. And you fled in a stolen shuttle."
She stares at him. "How do you --?"
"And you crashed, and you took the battle robot and fled the scene." He shakes his head. "It's all implanted memories, Six. None of it
really happened. We just built you a few days ago."
Tears are flowing, now, down her cheeks. She can feel them. "But ... I'm a -person-, I'm not some dumb robot!"
"I'm sorry, Six. You are not the Sylvie you remember." His face takes on a sorrowful air. "Please, untie me. We'll help you, I
promise."
"No! I don't -- I can't... I don't believe you!"
"My God, you're actually crying," he says, wonder evident in his voice. "I mean... spontaneous emotional response? That's
impossible!"
"Shut up, you bastard!" she cries.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! It's just... I mean..." he shakes his head. "Six -- Sylvie, sorry -- if I'd known that... oh
hell." Suddenly he looks very tired. "We don't understand the technology that built you. We thought -- I thought -- you were regular robots,
just... more advanced. We were supposed to implant memories and personalities on you so that you could perform some, ah, tasks for us."
She glares at him, but says nothing.
"If I'd known... I mean... I'm sorry."
"That's nowhere near good enough, and you know it," she responds.
He looks sick. "I know." He closes his eyes for a moment. Then his head snaps up. "Listen. I'm going to make this right. I don't
know how, but I will."
"I don't believe you."
"I don't expect you to. I can't explain it, but somehow the memory implant must have triggered something, buried in the parts we don't yet
understand. I swear, until tonight you were as alive as a piece of steel. We started the memory dump this afternoon, and it had just completed before we left
for the night. In those few hours... you came to life."
He wiggles a bit in his chair, grimacing. His hands have turned red from the blood trapped there by the bonds around his wrists, but he says nothing about
them.
"The others are out there, your friends," he says finally. Her head snaps up.
"What?!"
"I don't know where, or what prototype or codename they're using, or anything. Security is pretty tight here. But I know that we're building
them. The whole point of Project Scimitar -- you -- was to recapture the the four originals who escaped. Your friend Priss is one of them."
"Priss?! I thought you said none of my memories were real!"
"It is, and it isn't. It's hard to explain." He frowns, thinking. "Sylvie is from an alternate universe. She is dead. Your memories
were her life, pieced together from data we stole from that place. But she really existed there, as did the friends you remember. With me so far?"
"Y... yes."
"There were others that were stolen -- we call them the Rogues. Like Priss. They escaped and are free here in this universe, now. And I ... I think you
need to find them."
She stares at him in shock. "But--"
"I've done terrible things to you, I know," he says. "And I don't expect you to forgive me. But... my -God-, look at you! You're
-alive-! I don't know how, I don't understand it, it makes no sense... but you are a person, and -I- helped create you. I can't let that be
destroyed... which is what will happen if you stay here."
She looks at him suspiciously. "How do I know you're not lying to me now?"
"You don't!" he exclaims. "But you don't have a choice, either. The patrol will be coming by any time now, and they check every lab --
it's like an obsession with them, they never miss anything -- so if you stay here, you're -dead-." He grins, just a little. "Whether
I'm here or not won't make a difference to them... if they find you here, now, without having gone through the start-up process we'd planned...
you're dead. If I get caught in the crossfire... well, they've got other scientists."
He's right, she realizes. Regardless of anything else, she can't stay here. And if the others are out there....
"Okay." She grabs the helmet and puts it on. Cool air washes her face, drying the last of the tears, as the environmental systems come online. She
looks at Van Houten.
"Go," he says. "I'll be okay."
"Unfortunately," she mutters. He has the grace to look embarrassed.
"Left outside the door, straight to the third intersection, right, right, up to the top floor, left again, and hit that door running," he says.
"That's the maintenance garage and if you can make it there without setting off the alarms, you'll only have a regular rolling door to bust
through. If you -do- set off the alarms..." he shrugs. "God help you."
She checks the last of her systems with an ease that implies long familiarity, even though she's never done this before, and heads out the door, following
Van Houten's instructions.
Anri... Priss... she thinks. I'm coming. I'll find you.
-----\
Kirk Van Houten eyes the clock above the door. Three minutes since Unit Six -- Sylvie -- left the room. He wheels himself over to the lab table and, through
a variety of contortions that he never would have guessed he'd have been able to do, picks up the pictures in his teeth and drops them down the incinerator
chute.
Seven minutes.
He noses through his coat but finds nothing. He looks around the rest of the room, finds the other evidence in the trash, and manages to bend over enough to
get the bag in his teeth. He drags that to the chute and burns it as well.
Ten minutes.
He ponders the reversals of fate and the vagaries of conscience. Then he sighs. "Ah, fuck it," he says aloud. "I'm no use to anyone dead.
Here's hoping you made it, kid."
So saying, he wheels himself over to the master panel, looks one more time at the clock, then smashes his forehead down on the big red button.
Twelve minutes.
-----\
Sylvie is one minute and eight seconds, at her current rate of progress, from the maintenance garage and (hopefully) freedom, when the corridor lights up red,
alarm klaxons begin to sound, and large doors close off the archway that she has to pass through next.
Her suit echoes the alarm, helpfully throwing a display up that indicates that an intrusion has been logged in the research wing. She clears it absently and
ducks down behind a stack of canisters. She has not yet figured out how to activate the weapons systems, which is a problem. The suit has databanks that
contain many useful and fascinating details about the radiation projectors and nanocloud projectors built in to her gauntlets, and if she had time to read it
all she'd probably enjoy it, but it is badly organized and is not yet up to any sort of useful standard. And it does not appear to contain the activation
codes, which is what her suit is politely requesting of her every time she pulls the trigger. It is frustrating, to say the least, but she pushes it aside and
tries to think outside the box.
A squad approaches, consisting of ... well, they look a little like 55-Cs, she muses, with the blue armor and all, but the suit tags them as several Crey Cryo
Tanks and two Crey Field Agents. Whatever they are, they don't look friendly, and the agents resemble nothing so much to her as 55-Cs in disguise --
bulging muscles, bad suits, sunglasses, and all. She remains motionless behind the tanks as they jog by.
She pokes around a bit more in the suit's systems -- the mental equivalent of frantically rummaging through a toolbox looking for something you can't
remember but you'll know it when you see it -- and realizes that it has a built-in communications array, helpfully labeled with Crey frequencies, as well
as broadcast frequencies for other things. She doesn't want to call attention to herself, so she shuts off the Crey bits. Then she opens the others up
and blinks as a cascade, a veritable torrent, of information starts pouring in.
It is, in a word, a -madhouse- of transmissions out there. She doesn't know where to begin. There are police reports; there are people chattering on
about their lives; there are advertisements; there are even suggestive flirtations and a few out-and-out propositions. It's nuts. But because she has no
choice, and because she can hear another set of tanks marching her way, she quickly narrows it down to a channel that seems to be in use by people nearby
(judging by signal strength), and who are apparently discussing the intricacies of football scoring.
"Hello?" she whispers frantically. "Can anybody hear me?"
There is a pause, and a voice comes back. "Yes we can. What's up?" It's a friendly voice, big and joking, and does not sound startled at
all that a random girl out of nowhere has just dropped into his conversation.
"I'm trapped in a research lab, they've been holding me prisoner. The alarms are going off and security is looking for me and I need some
help!"
When it comes across the airwaves again, the voice is deadly serious. "You'll get it. Hang on; I'm passing the word. We'll get you out of
there." There is a click, then silence.
It is rather startling when, a few moments later, her HUD lights up with a request, coming in over a secured band, to initiate something called
'cooperative networking mode'. The message is tagged with an unfamiliar name; crossing her fingers (the suit echoes her movements), she acknowledges
and accepts.
A window appears, with two names in it: Wide Receiver and Mag Flashlight. Voices erupt in mid-sentence:
"--uck down here, Wide. Contact Riot Force, I think they have someone in that area."
The man who spoke earlier speaks again -- she recognizes his voice. "Mag's on it, thanks, Min." His attention shifts -- how she can tell,
she's not sure -- and his next question is directed at her. "How you holdin' out?"
"A bit worried," she says honestly. "They're looking for me and I just saw two more patrols go by."
"We're on our way," he assures her. Another name appears in the list -- Swift Sabre -- and a breathless female voice enters the conversation.
"I'm here!"
A different male voice intrudes. Sylvie notices the names lighting and dimming each time one speaks. If that's accurate, this would be the one called Mag
Flashlight. "We're almost to your location. Did you know your research lab is an abandoned warehouse?" She can hear the sounds of his
breathing and what sounds like traffic in the background.
"... no?" she replies after a moment. How to answer that? "Where are you?" she adds.
"Accordin' to this, we're right over you."
She looks up, and freezes. A Crey Field Agent is peering over the stack of canisters. He has a submachinegun -- her HUD helpfully identifies it as a Crey
Model 7 Adv, whatever that means -- pointed at her head. He smiles. "I found it!" he calls over his shoulder.
"Now would be a -really- good time," she gulps.
"You got it," replies Mag, and the ceiling suddenly begins to crackle. Frost spreads over its surface like a stop-motion film, rapidly coating a
circle roughly ten feet in diameter in ice. Fog begins to form and snake downwards.
Then, with a crumbling roar, it shatters and falls to the floor. That gets everyone's attention quickly; the Crey Tanks (there's more than the cryo
variety, now, she notices) spread out and turn to face this new threat; the multitude of field agents rushing towards her stop in their tracks. Even the one
with the gun pointed at her head takes notice, stepping back and turning sideways to keep her covered while still being able to see. She rises to her feet --
they found her anyway, and she'd rather be able to run if needed -- and waits.
Through the swirling dust and fog, three figures appear at the lip of the hole. Two of them look like walking bridge abutments; they are as wide as they are
tall, wearing blue and gold colors, but there the similarity ends. One appears to be a football player, of all things, and the other is wearing a
constantly-shifting suit of ice, through which his armor can barely be seen. Swift Sabre -- she assumes it's Swift, since the others are very definitely
male -- stands to one side, with a drawn katana and a ready stance. Sylvie's eyes widen as she gets a look; while there are definite differences,
Swift's armor appears very similar to her own.
"ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?!!" Wide Reciever roars, his voice so loud it reverberates throughout the entire room. Then he leans over, picks up
Mag Flashlight, and without so much as a by-your-leave hurls him like a football into the densest cluster of Crey troops in the room.
Sylvie hears a startled "What the -- yikes!" over the comm, but other than that there's no indication it wasn't rehearsed. Mag impacts a
Crey Power Tank feet-first, knocking it down and sending it skidding several feet away, and rebounds to his feet lightly. She sees a grin light up his face,
and then the view is obscured by a blast of super-cold air that instantly fogs that entire half of the room over. The sounds of combat erupt from within.
Wide Reciever leaps from the hole, landing on another group of Crey. Several of them simply collapse, driven to the ground by a blow of his anvil-like fists.
He lays into the crowd around him, each strike felling a Crey operative. A tank here, an agent there; it makes no difference. He doesn't appear to be
affected by, or even notice, the sheer volume of firepower being directed his way. Sylvie can only stand and watch in awe.
"Whoever you are! Up here!" Swift is waving at her from the hole in the cieling. "C'mon, while they keep them busy!"
Sylvie blinks and decides that's probably a good idea. She ducks around the canisters, dodges a flying Field Agent who is encrusted with ice and wearing
an unhappy expression, jumps lightly onto the rubble pile that was a ceiling, and looks up at Swift Sabre some twenty feet above.
"I can't jump that high," she says. Her best effort produces a meager five feet, and her suit is informing her that her thruster jets are
offline.
"Mag! Can you get her out of there?" Swift calls.
"BUSY!" Mag replies. The fog has mostly settled. Around him Crey operatives lie in various states of frozen-ness. Some are merely shivering and
blue, still attempting to fight but moving slowly; others are frozen solid, mouths open in silent screams. A few appear to have avoided the worst of it, and
it is these that Mag is trading blows with. Every punch he lands erupts with frost; every blow they land on him is accompanied by the crackle of ice. It
appears that he is winning, but it will take some time.
This observation is of course the cue for more Crey troops to arrive, which they do, pouring down the hall in a tidal wave of fury.
"Penalty: too many men on the field," Wide mutters, to which Mag replies with a snort. Wide lays down a particularly vicious blow, knocking several
Crey flat, then tackles the new arrivals -- literally, opening his arms wide and flinging himself into their midst. He is instantly buried under a writhing
mass of Field Agent and Tank.
Swift drops down through the hole and lands next to Sylvie. "Which way is out?" she demands, cutting down an operative who wanders too close.
"There," Sylvie says, pointing at the doors between this room and the maintenance garage. A man in a lab apron and goggles is standing there -- the
HUD thinks for a moment and tags him as a Research Assistant, question mark -- and spots her. He raises his pistol and fires. The blue bolt of whatever
sizzles past her ear, and frost covers that half of her facebowl for a moment. She stumbles and falls, flinging her arm out to catch her balance, and wishes
mightily that she had a weapon.
A new message appears in her HUD. "TASER READY", it blinks, then shrinks to an icon at the side.
What the hell, it can't hurt. The icon is superimposed over a wireframe model of her suit, on the arm; she extends it and pulls the trigger. Twin darts
leap out and pass on either side of the research assistant's head, embedding themselves in the wall behind him. A split-second later the charge erupts and
sizzles down the wires. The research assistant now has an afro, but is unharmed and unamused. He levels his cryo pistol for another shot and is promptly
body-slammed into the wall by a thrown Power Tank.
"Bad assistant, no donut!" Mag shouts, dusting his hands off. He takes a step forward and is hit from three sides by torrents of raw energy.
Lightning crackles and sizzles off his armor, grounding itself out on the floor and dancing over the bodies piled around him. Voltaic Tanks charge forward,
and almost as one slip and fall on an ice slick that wasn't there a moment before. Mag spreads his hands in a 'what can you do?' gesture and dives
back into the fray.
Swift works the edges -- a thrust here, a swipe there, never in the same place for more than a second. She is (very) lightly armored compared to the two
tank-like members of the team, but seems to make up for it by simply getting the hell out of the way whenever anything attacks her. And it's not like
she's under attack much; Mag and Wide have between them managed to attract the attention of everything in the room.
Unfortunately, Crey seems to have a limitless supply of reinforcements, a point which is driven home by the arrival of yet another half-dozen squads through
the other intersecting corridor.
"Wide!" Mag calls, turning a Voltaic Tank into an ice sculpture.
"What!?" is the response. The mass of Crey shifts and erupts, scattering bodies everywhere, and Wide stands up.
"Keep them busy for a minute?"
"Sure, no problem!" The momentary silence is shattered by a battle cry as Wide Receiver gathers himself, one hand splayed on the ground, knees bent,
shoulders tucked, and seems to explode forward like a human wrecking ball. His trajectory is marked by falling bodies as he plows into a blue-and-gold clad
figure who had been at the center of the mob -- a Paragon Protector, it appears. The two men hit the wall at an angle, bounce off, and roll into the stack of
canisters, sending steel bottles flying.
Mag rolls his shoulders, flexes his fingers, pops his neck. He relights his cigar and strides towards the armor doors keeping them from the maintenance bay,
pausing only long enough to pat an unconscious Cryo Tank on the head. "Nice try," he says, "but you need to work on that follow-through."
He reaches Sylvie, tips an invisble hat -- "Ma'am," -- and stands in front of the door, eyeing it momentarily.
"They haven't changed," he mutters incomprehensibly, then puts the cigar back in his mouth and extends his hands to the sides, flexing his
fingers in an intricate pattern. Then he puts one hand flat against the door, looks at Sylvie, and says, "Count to ten."
"Huh?" she replies.
"Ten? Count to it." Mag grins.
"One, two, three..." Sylvie begins to count. Swift glides past her with a muttered "Excuse me," skewers the arm of a Crey agent who was
drawing a bead on Mag, and vanishes back into the swirling fray, flashes of light from her blade and the cries of the fallen the only indication of her
passage.
".. eight, nine, ten?"
Mag steps away from the wall, taps some ashes off his cigar, and grabs an agent by his collar as he stumbles away from Wide Receiver's fist. "Hey,
buddy, gimme a hand here?"
"Huh?" the agent replies, somewhat muddily.
"Thanks!" Mag exclaims, and slams the agent into the door face-first. There is a deep, booming crack as the super-cooled metal gives way, followed
by a roar as it collapses to the ground.
"TOUCHDOWN!" Wide crows, and absently backhands an agent who is, it appears to Sylvie, attempting to figure out which way the room is spinning. The
man gives up the confusing mental struggle and proceeds to take a nap on the cold wet floor.
"Everyone outta the pool," Mag quips. "Ladies first!"
"No argument here," Swift says, dodging a blast of frost from the Crey side of the room and sheathing her katana. "C'mon, let's
go," she adds, tugging on Sylvie's arm. They stumble over the collapsed ruins of the door and dash through the garage towards the man-door to the
right of the rolling steel door leading outside.
"What about them?" Sylvie asks as they reach the exit.
"They'll catch up when they're done playing," Swift replies. They emerge into a rubble-strewn alleyway. Bright blue walls of energy rise in
the distance, bathing a city of old brick and industrial concrete in their glow.
"I don't think I'm in Tokyo any more," Sylvie whispers to herself, awed. Swift looks at her and appears to really notice her for the first
time; a shocked gasp comes across the communications link.
"You... you look like...!"
"We'd better talk this over later, ladies," Mag says as he turns sideways and steps through the door. "It's REALLY time we got outta
here; they're sounding the evac alarm in there, which means all hell's about to break loose."
Wide Receiver steps through the doorway, not bothering to turn; his shoulders crumble brick. "Less talk more run," he says, jerking a thumb back the
way they came. "Clock's about to run out."
"Pardon me, miss," Mag says, and scoops Sylvie into his arms. And then she's flying.
Well, that's what it feels like, anyway. Mag arcs high over the city in a single bound, touches down on a rooftop, jumps again. In thirty seconds
they're so far away she has lost sight of the building they came from. Conveniently, it reveals itself by burping a fireball out of the hole in the roof.
Her suit informs her that it is no longer receiving any Crey transmissions from its designated source and asks if she would like it to attempt to reconnect;
she hastily cancels that and tells it no way in hell.
Then, because it's been a long day already, even though her status monitor tells her she's only been awake a couple of hours, she decides to take a
nap.
-----\
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
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