ArchivedLogs:Cupid's Arrows (Prometheus Raid Getaway Drivers)

Cupid's Arrows (Prometheus Raid Getaway Drivers)
Dramatis Personae Hive, Kay, Sage, Flicker
In Absentia	2014-04-30 tiny little love kisses (part of madscience.)
Location Prometheus Facility, Western Tennessee
All things considered the trip hasn't been all that long, for the team. The flight -- well, /would/ have been under two hours but a whole lot of insistence meant a stop in Memphis for lunch because, well, who ever did battle on an empty stomach? That was some while back, though, because doing battle on a /full/ stomach just means cramps. Also because after flying /into/ Tennessee they still needed to pick up the pair of vans that will take all the refugees /out/ -- they're certainly not all going to fit in the Blackbird. And so now with the refugees stashed it's a pair of cargo vans, loaded up with first aid supplies and snacks and all the team, that has made its way to the compound way off in western Tennessee. It's a quiet parcel of land they come up on, a few scattered trees around a wide fenced-in enclosure that admittedly doesn't look like it houses much. The small two-story building set off past a field and a small parking lot looks kind of boringly officey. The approach was quiet. Park the trucks, have Flicker teleport them in closer. Now it's just -- quiet. The teams was just little specks off in the distance and now they're not visible around the side of the building at all. Just -- the quiet chirruping of birds resuming off in the trees. A rumble of thunder far off in the distance. There are stormclouds rolling in overhead, starting to obscure the late-afternoon sun. Hive's voice isn't abrasive, today; it slips in gently, an echoing murmur of many voices speaking in tandem. << Sage, building layout? >> He could go digging for it, at the moment her mind is as good as his own, but it's so much /quicker/ if she just /thinks/ of it without having to dig. There's -- a ridiculous amount of knowledge crammed into her mind. << -- swear trying to find anything in here is like searching the fucking internet with a goddamn card catalog. >> The back of one of the vans is being opened, and a plank ramp pushed out to thump on the ground. Kay stands at the open entrance, either hand wrapped around the handlebars of a speedy little Kawasaki sport bike. Which he's guiding down the ramp silently, eyes squinted after the tiny dots that are rapidly vanishing. Dressed in black kevlar vest and fingerless gloves, he's traded out the punky jewelry for... none. Just straight heavy duty black pants. Boots with a heavy tread. A sidearm hangs efficiently in a holster under one arm, and a second... stranger gun is fastened off the side of one bony-ass hip. A taser at the other. His eyes roll up towards the ominous sky, and his grin is - well. Hard. And running mentally down just how troublesome rain can make a good razing. << shame we don't have time to oil down the tarmac... >> Sage is in one of the trucks, her mind bright and aware. Fitted in body armor, her blue eyes shine without ATHENA, as her mind rapidly flashes back to Hive with the building layout shown. Sage has memorized every bit of it, and has already made several pathways through the building in her mind as well. << I apologize, I learn quite a bit. >>. Sage's mind has numerous trains of thought open, all having to do with the mission at hand. It's kind of hectic, but it doesn't slow her down at all. << I'm noticing. >> And then there's a stretch of quiet, from Hive, at least. A drone of insects. An almost absent mental squeeze of pressure that moves from Sage to Kay and then back. << They're in, >> he finally announces; for Sage, at least, he's keeping updated. The team's movement in through the side door of the facility, heading for the stairwell. A troop of guards heading down for them. Another heading /up/ from the basement. << Alarm's sounded. Could have company any time now. >> Kay's mind is, as ever, the lively /elasticated/-flexible place of those that live in a state of steady improvisation. One that hungrily takes in Hive's updates as a balm against his unfortunate inability to be /everywhere at once/. For the moment, he's leaving the bike propped on its kickstand and strolls their surrounding area with large hands open and swinging at his sides. His lanky height makes the gait kind of like Big Foot footage. He's surveying the ground for - point of incineration. Any lines of tar in the pavement, the distance from here to the field and all its scrubby autumn grass. Sage's mind begins processing several routes of action with the moving guards, several trains of thought focused on this. She's pulling up a mental route that is probably the closest around the guards moving towards them. << For now we need to keep out of fire if possible, I believe. If one was to volunteer to divert or take out the guards, that would work as well but is also quite risky. >>. Sage's mind is flooding with more possibilities of course, but that one and route is being pushed up to the surface for Hive. << They've got fourteen labrats in the basement and three on the testing floor, >> Hive's next report comes. << Flicker's quickest at getting them out of the actual cages -- can you find Joshua a route to the labs? Jax thinks he'll be best to grab the three stragglers. I'll reroute them your way. It'll buy 'em time for sure. >> There is, meanwhile, another droning starting up. It's louder than the buzz of the insects, though in caliber it sounds vaguely similar, a hum that starts in the distance but is slowly growing. Tiny insect-specks in the sky. << Seventeen. >> The fully tally number. For all his grinning, Kay doesn't seem to have a specific opinion on whether it's good or bad. High or low. For now, just a number. Rubbing his hands together slowly, he turns his head towards the sound of distant whining. "Think we got incoming, gorgeous." Presumably, to Sage. Or maybe his bike. Which he lifts up a boot and rests it on the seat of, fingers drumming on his knee for just a moment... more. << Roger. >>. And like lightning, Sage is mentally mapping a route from Joshua to the labs, trying to account for both fastest and safest, latter being more important. << Here. >>. At the sounds of the droning, Sage's voice comes out to Kay. "I believe you can handle it. Good luck.". And then she's going back into mental planning, but her hand does reach for the web gun on her, just in case. << Gotcha. >> The mental caliber of Hive's voice changes, through the course of his speaking, tiny shifts in stress and tone as one person here and one there is picked up and dropped out of the mental lineup, his mind leapfrogging from worker to worker inside the building. The droning increases, a loud thrum that can be /felt/ vibrating through the air, now. The tiny insect-specks are becoming bigger ones, gaining clearer visibility, a cloudy black swarm of drones whirring through the air -- not, immediately, /for/ them, some of the drones have split off to the sides to patrol the grounds. But some have spotted Kay, clearly; there's a /pause/, some of the drones hovering a distance off. More of them split off. And then they're starting to converge, not all at once. Three and three they're whirring in pincer-like from the sides towards Kay in twinned tight V-formation; with abrupt bright-sizzling laser blasts searing towards -- him. Or maybe his bike. They all seem like nice shiny targets. << Here we go again. >> Kay unclips his webgun and takes his time lining up his sights with one of the nearest drones. And fires. One shot, then two - while in the lower hemisphere he's KICKING the Kawasaki into ignition and instantly accelerating. The rear tire SCREAMs, the front wheel picks up a few inches off the pavement and if Kay hadn't quickly grabbed onto the handles it would have run right out from underneath him, lasers pelting the pavement and punching a hole in his seat cushion. He only actually goes a few yards before a slam of breaks and a yank of handles has his rear end rotating around the front wheel to have him suddenly facing the drones again. And this time thrusting up either empty hand. Two heat-rippling waves of explosive force mushroom up from below. Sage is just sitting there, mind still racing, as Kay does the firey thing he is so good at. << Kay has the Osbots. No danger on my end. Yet. >>. Sage is facing the door with her webgun, on the safe side. The nearest two formations of bots are blown back by the explosions, knocking into each other and tumbling back in a sudden clattering shrapnel-rain of melting plastic. Even as these bots are being blown apart, though, there's another trio of them zooming in from behind Kay; one of them is eagerly firing off lasers, still, in quick zap-zap-ZAP though the other two seem to have switched, tiny plastic /darts/ shot off from these. Another pair of bots is -- well, it can't really be said they're creeping, their droning is /pretty/ apparent. But they're approaching the truck from behind, and then -- rolling up towards Sage's window. Almost curiously. Like hello? Peek? Hi? Hi! One of them lights up a little brighter. /So eager/. Just before it shoots a pair of bullets towards her window. Sadly, pavement does not have a lot in it to sustain a flame, and once Kay's blasts flare up they just as soon lash out of existence, leaving only blackened scorchmarks behind. A similar effect occurs where lasers strike against the back of his body armor, pelting and pinging against kevlar, the bike's body, the pavement and leaving warped grayed and black smears. Where they lance his thigh, his forearm, his calf, they mostly just sizzle, earning a hard /hiss/ through his teeth. He throws up an arm to raise another localized conflagration, kicking the bike back into ACCELERATION, not actually noticing the ping! of a dart bouncing off the bike's engine. Or his armor. He does slap a hand against the sharp /bite/ of one that pokes into his bicep. And grinds his teeth harder when he can spare a glance at it. And accelerates /away/ from the vans, and the line of traffic that would need to be crossed to /reach/ the vans from the distant facility, trailing a fingertip near the ground one one side to throw up a roostertail of fire in his wake and letting out loud /whoops!/ over the roar of his engine to give more drones a clear target. "/COME/ on!" Drones should never hesitate. As soon as the light flashes through, Sage knows what is about to happen, as she dives down below the window, narrowly missing the bullets. << This should be fascinating. >>. Right after the drone has stopped firing, Sage is quickly leaping up to fire a glob of web at the drone's turrets, as she moves behind her previous seat, using it as cover, her mind alert and anticipating..anything. << Got labrats incoming, >> Hive's voice sounds again, a little bit distant and oddly calm in the face of all this chaos. << Flicker's started his run. Vans are gonna get crowded. >> It's not a /long/ bit of warning before there /is/ a Flicker, in ghostly-shimmering mirage-trail with one be-scrubbed middle-aged woman in tow, jumping his way across the lawn to deposit the woman in the back of Sage's van and just as promptly vanish again. The drone's turrets grind to a sticky-jammed-up halt at the webglue, the drone itself dropping unceremoniously to the ground. It whines an odd screechy noise of protest as it tries to get airborne again, unsuccessfully. The second drone is humming in to take its place at the window -- it's not shooting bullets, now that the window is shattered, but tiny plastic darts as well, aimed at Sage's neck. Shootshootshoot? Kay, meanwhile, with all his noise, is accumulating a whole new /tail/ of drones, another trio joining the ones that were already on him like a merry CHASE. Whoosh! Two of them are still shooting darts, though two are back to lasers -- one seems to be mostly focusing on the bike. One is MIXING IT UP with bullets, because it's a rebel like that. One is foundering and spluttering to a fiery death in the trail of flame in Kay's wake. Koff. Koff. One last dart splutters out of it to land on the scorched pavement beside. This is no James Bond movie; all of Kay's decades of biking experience just barely have been keeping him on the /road/, hunched forward, clinging to the handlebars and careening at ill advised speeds to keep the drones freaking /behind/ him, pulling rapid turns a sportsbike is made so well for to send up rows of blasts at the thickest drone groupings. Like a pied piper of deathmachines! That are shooting /back/ at him! The lancing laser heat singing down around him is mostly ignored; already, the initial laser burns down his leg have begun to steadily knit, but that little bugger with the bullets is a /pain/. Each slug that slams into his armor nearly sends him pitching face-first into the center point between the handlebars, /bam/ /bam/ /bam/- until a dear little 'crunch?' signifies a broken warranty somewhere as the armor shatters. A second one follows. He'd be cursing a lot more if the rapid firing, peppering the road to either side of him didn't finally get a lucky hit and blow out his back tire, sending the whole mess of it cartwheeling out from under him. Airborn, he still travels! The pavement sails by beneath his speeding body. And he throws down his hands and fires off another huge explosion at the ground. To cushion his landing. Slow his momentum. There's only so much to do, though, before he's a rolling ball of limbs toppling off the side of the road into a ditch. Just as Sage expected. They weren't going to leave her hanging. She's firing her web gun fast again, her shot firing right as the drone fires the darts, a quick mental message to Hive. << The drones are firing some sort of darts. No idea what is in them. >>. Sage waits to see what happens to the drone she just fired a glob of web at, and waits to see if more of their friends come, before she calmly speaks over to the woman who was just dropped in the back. "Are you alright? Stay behind me, we are having a bit of an..issue right now." << They're firing down here too. Noone hit yet. Joshua's got one of the labrats. Flicker's coming out with a second. >> Though he's currently making his way very /zig-zag/ erratically across the lawn, even his teleportation path weaving quickly to account for the drones /also/ weaving towards the van. There's an odd burning coming from Kay's arm where it was hit. It's kind of like getting a FLU SHOT. Fierce muscle-ache-burn, first, though it's slowly spreading outwards in a ripple of burn that isn't really crippling so much as just persistently dull-achey-annoying. The drone near the van has perhaps learned from its fellow. It darts -- /forward/ when Sage shoots, tumbling /into/ the front seat of the van along with her; the web glue hits it, though somewhat harmlessly on the plastic side of its body as it shoots again, towards her cheek. Behind Kay there's odd /careening/ crunching -- peewcrch? Peewshrrk. As the firing drones are picked off by his blasts, ricocheting into each other. Cracklecrunchpop. The shooting is tapering off, at least, as they crunch and fall down to the ground. Though there's another one. Peeking its beady glowing eye out through the trees at him. With an almost cautious thwip -- though it's shooting its webglue at first towards the cartwheeling bike. Sage can react fast, but she doesn't have superhuman reflexes. The dart pierces her cheek, as she falls backwards from the force, mentally cursing in Bulgarian as she is quickly turning her web gun to the net mode to try and get it away from her, laying on her back, firing towards one of the drone's spots where the webs will hit quickly. << I take that back. I'm hit. >>. After the web is fired, she's swapping the gun's mode back to glob. Kay's poor loyal little speedster bike, already summersaulting down the road ass over kettle takes the webgluing SPLAT like a pie to the face. The next time it makes a rotation, the sticky side splats down like a slice of freshly peanut-buttered bread and sticks to the ground. The bike whips to the end of its elastic tolerance---! and then RUBBERBANDS back to where it's stick. Meanwhile, Kay is... dragging himself up from a ditch like a creature from the Black Lagoon, half his body armor ripped clear off to expose a shoulder of angry road rash, his face and arms and other bared skin char-blackened like a coalminer from the explosion and bleeding from a number of exciting places. His eyes are /radiant/ and lively though, panting through snarly-grinning teeth - whups a few are missing, the lip torn - and with a kind of winced strain he throws up an arm to thrash the next wave of VOLUNTEERS. The explosion is considerably smaller and his smile is a little less /gratified/. He clenches up his other hand, the muscles down his arm leaping to concentration so fast they quiver like a horse's haunch, and throws this hand up and out as well. The garish bloody smile returns. For Sage there's the same -- slight burning, after the initial pierce of needle. The drone splut!sticks where it is hit, put-put-putting and then ceasing its attempts to rise. Hmm hmm. The swarm of drones has at least faded off to a -- tiny trickle. A pair off in the distance still, evidently, perimeter-scouting. One swooping in towards Kay and just as quickly thrown /off/, crashing into the webshooting one in the latest batch of explosion. The ground is littered with the sad half-lit faces of dying robots. The back of the vans are slowly filling up with people, /shaken/ and confused and wide-eyed as Flicker deposits them and just as quickly takes off again. << Hit? How you feeling? You guys alright? >> << It is a burning pain, achey, I will be fine. Drones are taken out, but one is webbed inside the van, apologies. >>. Sage is removing the dart from her cheek, before turning to the labrats briefly, before back to the window. "Everyone remain calm. I am Sage and I am apart of the rescue operation here. We will get you away from here in no time." << Right as rain! >> Kay crows back somewhere at the outer limits of the telepathic range. He's not /hiding/ the fact that he's perfectly aware he's been shot twice, lasered, dart'd, blown up and possibly has broken a number of precious somethings in his wipeout, it's just not anything outside of his general range of 'right'. With fewer targets, he can time his blasts to soak the worst of the volleyed bombardment. Or rather... he should have been able to. Each returning explosion continues to diminish. From a oily-rippling gout spanning ten feet high, to another only five feet. He strains hard to coax another slightly taller, but the subsequent fails to reach high enough to shield him at all. << --something's wron- >> Is as far as he's got before dead-center he's struck by another bullet. Two more laser blasts, and when he tries to return fire again... nothing happens at all. Wide-eyed and staring at his extended hand and the LACK of broiling inferno rising up from it, he's shot /again/, thumping back on his ass. Which is finally enough to wake him up and go grasping for the webgun at his hip. << shit shit shit what- >> << What? >> Hive's mind is suddenly keener-alert out here. << Flicker's almost done, can you hold out? We can call Joshua back. What's going on? >> Heedless of Kay's current impotence issues, one of the drones is still courting him. Weaving-flying over with little darting motions, whizzing its way up towards him with a -- pchoo! pchoo! of pretty burny laser kisses. "You had a dart in your cheek," a young girl in the back of the van points out to Sage, wide-eyed. "Right there." She points. At her own cheek. In Sage's own mind, things are getting..dimmer. The rapid scanning of her surroundings is becoming less so, and several of her thought trails are starting to shut down. Feeling something running from her nose, she puts her fingers to her face, blood on her fingers. << Hive. The darts seem to be power suppressants. Warn the others. >>. Sage is turning to the girl staring at her, as she calmly speaks back. "I am fine. It is part of the job description." << Just get them out. >> Sitting splay-legged on the ground, Kay's mental answer is clenched with pain and /aggravation/ at how speedy these little bastards are. Losing fire power is problem enough, but losing his rapid healing time for burn injuries is what's giving him grief at the moment - the body trauma puts a tremble in his arms, gripping the webgun double-handed to steady it and even then they /keep darting around/. He tries to roll clear when his suitor makes its next bid for affection, only partially succeeding and taking a shot across the ribs. And then brings up his webgun and - firing? Is this how drones love? Chu! << I'm not healing. >> SPLAT, the drone gets a hungry kiss across the FACE. Putputput, it shudders down to sticky itself against the ground unhappily, whirring-whining where it is splatted and firing a useless laser up into midair. Pchoo. "... what's your job description?" is the girl's next (just as wide-eyed) question. "I don't think I'd like getting-shot-darts-at-job," says another girl beside her. "/We/ get poked at a lot," the first girl points out. "They don't pay us for it," says the second practically. "So's not a job. -- Do they pay you for getting darted?" Sage's mental speed is dimming more and more to average levels, as she speaks. "You can say I help people. No matter the risk. People like you.". Sage takes a breath. "And you will not get poked at anymore. I see my payment as helping people like you. It's a selfless job.". Sage takes a glance out the window, looking out it for a bit, before turning back. "They will not hurt you again, trust us." << Nearly there, >> Hive says, << Get the vans ready and we'll roll. Flicker's on his last one. Just gotta get the team and we're out. Fff. Joshua's -- hit he can't. Heal you when he's out, fuck. We'll call Mirror in. How bad is it? >> "Shhhh," crumpled on his side and propped up on an elbow now, Kay makes a CLENCHED JAWED hushing sound. Through bloody teeth, reaching out a long-fingered hand and /taking hold/. Of the little sputtering glued-up drone. "SHHHHH. Just stop." He drags it nearer to him. Levels the webgun on its center of mass and distributes his... sticky love all over its face. << Had worse. >> Looking down at the bleeding gunshot wounds and scorched laser marks, he is a true statement. Considering he's, in fact, been killed all the /way/ to death before. << We'll be ready. >> He rocks forward onto knees, dragging out a creak of pain and curling an arm around his abdomen. Adds while standing up to begin his staggering zombie-shuffle towards the vans, << Most the drones out here're taken out. Keep 'em alive. We'll figure the rest out. >> The last half of this is kind of /mystified/ because he's looking down to realize he has, in fact, glued his hand to a drone. FFS. SHUFFLE. << This sucks. >>