by Inferi » Fri Jan 25, 2013 3:29 am
Mission Sterling
For the first few moments they were in the air, Kristina didn’t look away from the canopy, focusing on getting the aircraft clear of the triangle of SGDF buildings. It wasn’t a particularly difficult thing to do, or they would only be able to have experienced pilots go out on patrol, but since she liked to make a loop around each building before continuing on…well, that required a bit of concentration. She didn’t go too close; that had been what she had lost her license for doing. Still, about thirty feet would be considered hazardous by the less experienced, although that was well within a safe range for her. With no crosswinds to mess her up, it was even easier, as she didn’t have to bother compensating for that.
Her preliminary loops finished and her altitude at a safe figure, Kristina leaned back in her seat, holding the controls more loosely than she had during takeoff. Now that they were up in the air, and the holo-map was displayed across the canopy, there wasn’t a whole lot she had to worry about. Keeping the helicopter steady and on course was second nature to her, so unless something massive came up there really wasn’t much of a chance of anything going wrong.
Hearing Mission’s question, Kristina grinned once again, knowing how much her friend hated the initial part of the flight. What made it funny to her was that the takeoff was one of her favorite parts. It had the initial rush of adrenaline and was incredibly thrilling. She loved the feeling of leaving the ground and entering the sky, freeing herself from the confines of gravity. Figuratively speaking, of course. The flight was fun as well, but the takeoff…there wasn’t much she could do that would compare to that feeling.
“You’re going to have to get used to it someday, you know.” she commented, not answering Mission’s question right away. They had plenty of time in the sky, so rushing it a minute ahead would make no difference whatsoever. She didn’t say any more pertaining to that subject, mainly because she had tried discussing it with her friend before and gotten nowhere. It was just something that Mission couldn’t really control no matter how much she might not want to dislike it.
Pausing for a response from Mission, whether or not she gave one, Kristina continued, “I suppose you do deserve to know why I wanted to talk to you. I – hang on. Sorry, forgot about the display.”
Her hands moved quickly across the instrument panel in front of her, manipulating the cockpit display. Although she really didn’t care much for the fact that regulations stated this display was required to be up during patrols, she went with it just because it was the right thing to do. Everything that would be displayed could be seen on instruments in the cockpit, but having it up on the canopy was easier, or so people claimed. In her eyes, it didn’t even do that much. The outline of the buildings still remained, but now several more figures appeared, including wind speed, altitude, humidity, air pressure, an outline of the patrol route, and…the image of a naked girl in place of the outline of the Statue of Liberty?
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” Kristina groaned.
Much to her annoyance, the techs that made this display for the helicopters liked to add in random images that didn’t do anything besides annoy the helicopter pilots. It wasn’t harmful, and they didn’t do it all that often, so Command had never really placed any regulations on it. None of the images were shocking enough to make a pilot lose control or be surprised, as the techies took great pains to make sure what they did was only for fun and not actually a problem for the pilots. The images only appeared on the patrol display, always fit precisely on something that was already there, and they were considered “Easter Eggs” by the techies. Of course, helicopter pilots rarely thought of them as anything more than an annoyance, and fortunately all it took was a phrase to make the image disappear.
“Clear display of Easter Eggs.” she said in a tired voice, and the image vanished, leaving just the technical data behind. Most pilots spoke that phrase the instant the display came on, just in case there was something that wasn’t readily visible but was still there.
“I really hate those guys.” she added, shaking her head. Her opinions on the matter had been made clear to Mission before, and to Command as well, but without any clear evidence as to was actually doing it there wasn’t a whole lot they could do. Everyone knew that if they were found making them, it would result in them getting in trouble, but the techies just had to have their fun somehow.
Finished with that, Kristina returned her attention to what had been happening before it, and kept going with what she had been saying. “I wanted to ask you if you would want to join my squad.” she said, looking over at Mission for a moment as she spoke before returning her eyes to the sky in front of her. “I feel like it has gotten to the point where I can trust you on a field operation, and felt that I should extend the offer for you to consider.”
As she spoke, Kristina hoped that Mission wouldn’t take what she was saying the wrong way. She would have trusted her friend on a field operation as a friend, but as a professional soldier it hadn’t been there until recently. There was a difference, and she just hoped that Mission wouldn’t take it as a bad thing.
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Ciel Cruxell, Andrew Jackson, Kendrick Mendoza
Whether the five minutes felt like it took forever or felt like it took no time at all, it eventually elapsed and the invisible barrier keeping them from entering the backstage area would drop. As expected, the atmosphere of the club hadn’t changed much at all in the brief span, although there were suddenly a lot more people here than there had been before. Apparently around eight at night was the time things picked up, which probably made at least one of them glad that they weren’t going to be in the main area for too much longer.
Weaving their way across the room would prove to be moderately irritating, although no incidents would occur unless someone was trying to make one happen. All of the girls stayed out of their way, and none of the other guests would have any more of a desire to start anything than they did. That being said, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t get in the way by mistake and then take a moment to realize they were there before they would leave, or something of that sort.
The bouncer at the door stopped them for a moment before nodding and saying, “Alright, go ahead, but don’t go to any rooms besides the ones that have agreed to see you. I don’t want to have to come back there and deal with anything.” The man was fairly muscular, and looked like he could deal with most of the people that would come to this place. Maybe not if the fight was three-on-one, but there would be no reason for that to happen, right?
The door behind him led to a well-lit, plain hallway, which led the trio down for about twenty feet before turning to the right and opening into a wider hallway that had a large number of rooms placed at regular intervals. Each door had the first name of the girl that it belonged to visible on it in letters a few inches high, and most of them were adorned with something that made it look fancy. There were a few plain ones, though, and Auria’s, the second on the left, was one of them. The door itself was closed, and if one of them tried it they would find it to be locked. Whether they did that or knocked, though, the response would be the same: the door would unlock and Auria’s voice would say, “Come in.”
The room the door would open into was possibly a lot more typical of a working girl than they might expect. A rack of skimpy yet gaudy clothing was off to the right, and across the room from it was a closet that held more similar clothing. The walls themselves were mostly bare, although there were a few light fixtures on them as well as one on the ceiling.
Directly across from the door was a large mirror with lights ringing the outside, and in front of that was a small counter that had several different pieces of makeup and such scattered across it. A chair with a swivel base that was fixed to the floor in front of the counter, and it was in this chair that Auria sat. Everything in the room was meticulously sorted and ordered.
When they walked in the three Vespa members would be able to see three floating holographic screens in the air in front of Auria. Each one held the biography of a different person, and the three people that were visible were identified by the pictures at the top of the screen. It was Ciel, Kendrick, and Andrew whose bios she was examining, and as they walked in she gave some kind of command and the screens vanished.
Turning around in her seat, Auria said, “Shut the door, please.” To the disappointment of anyone that wanted to see her looking like she had before, it was clear when she turned that she was dressed in fairly normal casual clothing. Jeans, a light, red jacket that was fully zipped up, and a pair of comfortable shoes with black socks under them covered her body. Now that she was out of the main area of the club, her hair that had been let down a bit, and it was covering the eye that she had used to flash the Syris flag at them like a natural eyepatch.
She didn’t say anything else at first, remaining silent as she waited for everyone to get into the room and do what she had asked. If they had anything to say or do first, now was probably the time to do it.
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Leo ‘Reaper’ Parker, Jonathan Edge
“Sir.” Alicia replied, positioning herself in a way that gave her the best vantage point of the entire hallway. Her head kept swiveling from side to side, taking in the corridor on both sides of her position just in case anyone was coming from either. Although most of her face was obscured under her helmet, her posture indicated that she was nervous. It was understandable, since everything as going too well and they were trained for things going wrong, making this incredibly nerve-wracking.
The lock was one of the more modern ones that utilized an actual key, so the readers for it were both digital and tumbler-based. Regardless of how it worked, though, the care that Jon used when inserting the key into the lock seemed almost unnecessary, as there was no signs of it being trapped in any way. There was nothing out of the ordinary with the lock, nor did anything happen when he pushed the door open. The interior of the room was quiet, with no signs of movement.
It would appear that way on Leo’s end as well. Even when the door was opened, there was no movement from anyone in the room. Not even a turn of the head, or the person on the bed sitting up. The curtain moved again, and he would once again be able to see the person at the computer. They were still in the exact same position as they had been.
In his helmet radio, the Lieutenant was busy saying, “Something about the people that the owner said came to fix their heating problems seemed out of place to me, especially given the fact that the owner said that there still seem to be problems. There’s nothing out of place so far, but there’s a few more places I need to check.”
As seen by Leo, Jon’s approach into the room triggered no reactions of any kind from the people in there. Although he entered into the main room first, an area that was empty, nothing greeted him in there. The entrance to the bedroom, the room that Leo was looking into from his perch, was accessible through a door on the right wall of the room. There was nothing out of place about the room, and in fact it was neat enough so that anything he would want to look for, such as booby traps or something of that nature, would be pretty easy to spot. Nevertheless, no matter how hard he might look for them, there weren’t any. It seemed that whoever lived here hadn’t been expecting any of them.
Of course, his perspective would change once he actually went into the bedroom. The approach would seem to go unnoticed once again by those in there, although now that he was actually in the same room it would be quite clear why. Both of the individuals in the room were dead, their life signs nonexistent on any scan that Jon might care to manually run. The helmet didn’t keep track of life signs automatically, but it had a number of scans that it could run pertaining to that subject. The people had appeared to have been positioned in a way that made anyone looking in think that they were actually doing something, but both had very clear signs of what had caused their deaths, and it was the same basic thing on both of them.
The one on the bed, a female that matched all of the descriptions of their target, was lying in a way that covered up the small hole in the back of her head as well as the small seepage of blood that it let out. It almost didn’t seem like she had been positioned there, the way she looked was so natural. It would take someone moving the body slightly to even see the blood, and even then it was a surprisingly small amount.
In a similar manner, the man in the chair, an individual that looked perhaps three years older than the woman, was positioned in a way that made the small hole in the side of his head invisible to anyone looking in the window. The hole in his head was readily visible from where Jon was, and it seemed that only the female’s injury had been hidden from everyone. That meant that whoever had done this had been anticipating someone watching from the window, as his wound was only invisible to someone looking in.
Someone had been expecting them, but apparently it hadn’t been their target.
Back outside, Leo would be in for yet another nasty surprise. Just seconds after Jon found the two bodies, there would be a gunshot and a bullet would ricochet off the metal door that was situated on the roof directly behind him with a loud clang. The only thing that he would see was a glint of light coming from the room of a building three structures away from the apartment complex, and on the same side of the street. It was possible that such a glint had been the shooter, but it was equally possible that it wasn’t and he or she was somewhere else entirely.
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I get and beat you with until you realize who's in command around here.
