annexedlogs | September Catch-All [OTA]

Entry tags:

September Catch-All [OTA]

Who: Marc, Steven, and open!
What: September catch-all, including a mini-mission
When: All month
Where: See prompts
Content Warnings: Nothing for now

I. Shopping trip - Open Markets and Night Market, OTA

Steven is finding their little apartment very drab and dour, so Marc is out trying to find things to brighten it up. Also, to expand their wardrobe a little, since their original foray had been one of desperation rather than strategy, and hadn't had much in it to Steven's taste.

So Marc wanders around the shops, looking kind of touristy but not really minding, picking up this or that to examine curiously, listening for a perk of interest or disinterest from Steven. If anyone he recognizes spots him, he'll wave. "Lookin' for something in particular?" he asks.

Or he'll try to hastily swap places with Steven, if it's one of Steven's handful of tentative friends, which results in a moment of blankness and then some rapid blinking and a, "What?"

II. Baby's First Sparring - Gym, closed to Harley

The promised afternoon, Steven shows up in clothes he doesn't mind getting sweaty, because he fully expects Harley Quinn will wipe the floor with him. Marc has gotten him a pair of poles like what they had in the suit-- truncheons, Marc called them-- so he'd have something familiar, but Marc is refusing point blank to come out and meet her. Something about not liking psychiatrists.

Well, after Doctor Harrow, Steven can't really blame him. So he's the one waiting for Harley outside the gym, waving cheerily once he spots her distinctive pigtails. "Miss Quinn! Hello, over here!"

III. Practice Makes Perfect - Mage's sector, OTA

Marc things the Mage's Sector is... quaint. Steven thinks it's adorable. Which is good, because he spends a lot of time there. Borrowing books, taking lessons twice a week with two different local tutors, and just sitting around people watching and practicing whatever spell he's working on at any given time.

He doesn't pay for reagents much, both not wanting to spend their limited stipend on something he's not really ready for, being still learning very low-level spells that don't require a lot of prep, but he absolutely gawks at them all. "What even is that?" he wonders, staring at a jar with a floating eyeball in it. "It looks like an eye. Is it an eye? What kind of spell wants for an eye, I wonder?"

Or he'll be sitting in the Hare & Hammer, nursing a beer and casting tiny illusions over his table, just for fun. Maybe it's somebody's face, or miniature fireworks, or a hollow bird skull. Okay, that one's probably a little weird.

IV. Mini-Mission - Sabotaging Sensors, OTA

They can see the top of the sensor tower from behind the boulder they're sheltering by, the best cover they have until it's time to run out and set the charges. Marc is the distraction, the cover fire, and to that end is loaded up in body armor and three layers of wool and leather under it just in case it's crappy body armor, a lot of guns, and some spare C4 in case it's necessary. Plus, Steven's hovering behind his eyes, ready to snatch his hands for spell-casting if necessary. And fretting.

(I'm not sure if the mage armor will hold up to bullets.)

"It'll be fine," Marc mutters, hopefully under his breath enough for his current partner in crime to hear it. Then he unholsters his first gun and, louder, asks, "Ready to run for it?"

V. Wildcard!

Anything else you feel like doing? I'm open, just start something, or hit me up at cacopheny on plurk!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Layla's eyeing the tower, calculating distance and angle for perhaps the dozenth time. She's working on memory for the terrain, not about to stick her neck out before it's time, but that's fine, that's familiar. It's more exposed than she likes, but it's not the first time she's had to deal with physical infiltration under less than ideal circumstances.

At least it isn't raining, and there are no dogs.

She glances towards Marc when he addresses her, and smiles, a quick flash of assurance. "Ready," she says. "See you on the other side."

If there is, perhaps, something just a little bit strained in her smile, in her voice, surely it's just the fact that they're dealing with still-unfamiliar enemies with unpredictable powers. Surely.

This is more exposed than they're used to working, the two of them, but just the fact that it's Layla handling the other half of this job makes it feel more comfortable. Marc knows exactly what to expect out of Layla, with the exception of just how far she can stretch her new object-moving ability, but even then-- that can only be a benefit, right? Like the new spell Steven worked out to protect them both. Not to be relied on, but still possibly an edge the Sylphids don't have.

So his answering smile is encouraging, and warm. He gives her shoulder a little squeeze, then unholsters his guns. "I'll be watching you the whole way, baby." He does peek out, then says urgently, "Go!" The timing is best right now, and as soon as she runs, he'll be right behind her, angling out from her and firing to draw the guards' attention.

She's off like a shot, keeping fast and low, as difficult a target as she can be with no cover. She counts off the distance in her head, braced for the sound of gunfire so that she doesn't falter when she hears it behind her.

Doesn't falter when she hears it ahead of her, either, though her heart squeezes in her chest, and it's an effort of will not to look back to make sure that Marc isn't hit, isn't-

Get to the tower. Pen them in. Set the charges. Minimize the risks by completing the mission, as quick and efficient as she can.

That's what the body armor and magic spells are for. He'll be fine. Probably.

And if he's not, Steven's been studying healing spells, too.

He takes out two of the Sylphid guards in the nearest bunch before they even realize something's happening. The gunfire she hears is aimed at him, but he's already ducked behind one of the supply trucks, which was why he went at this angle to begin with.

Before anyone can look for an alternate source of trouble, he leans out to fire again, catching one in the side but not killing him.

Logically, she knows that. Emotionally...it's going to take some time.

Ahead, she sees the door of one of the latrines set up for the Sylphid tasked with assembling and guarding the sensor tower crack open. Not wanting to open fire and alert the rest of the guards to her presence so early, she summons her will and slams it shut, to the muffled cry of surprise of the Sylphid inside. Her steps falter a moment at the split in her attention, but this task, at least, is simple enough that she's able to recover.

Since a sliver of his attention is on her, he notes the falter, and hastily aims that way-- but she seems okay. No trouble. Not yet, anyway.

He has to duck down at a hail of bullets at him, but one bounces off the mage armor spell-- which cracks, but doesn't shatter-- and the rest hit the truck. "You guys really can't aim for shit!" he calls, before firing blindly in their direction without actually looking.

He doesn't hit any of them. Obviously.

She pours on speed, aware that the distance to the sensor tower hasn't actually doubled, that it's just adrenaline stretching out her perception of time and distance, a desperate neurochemical attempt to buy her a few more milliseconds if she needs to react.

Finally, she reaches the tower and skids to her knees, hands plunging into the satchel holding the charges. For her, this is the most dangerous part. The explosives are relatively simple, stable enough that they could safely be handed to people whose experience, to put it mildly, varies wildly. Getting them placed and set is still going to require most of her attention. They need to destroy the damn towers, not just dent them.

Marc stays down for a couple seconds, letting bullets whiz by over his head or clang into the heavy truck chassis.

He's been paying a little attention during Steven's magic lessons. Not a lot, but a little. And he has exactly one spell he can cast, on his own, without Steven's help.

He fires once over the top of the truck, without looking, then stands straight up and flicks his free hand at the Sylphids. A bright light flares in each of their faces, eliciting a few cries of pain and annoyance, giving him a couple seconds to actually aim before they start firing again. The light also illuminates where Layla is, and reminds him he's really got to keep them focused on him.

It's an act of supreme will to not look over at the brilliant flash on the edge of her peripheral vision, to keep her head down and keep working on the charges. Marc can take care of himself. The best thing she can do is get this done.

"One down," she says into the earpiece the rebels had supplied, and scrambles to the next leg of the tower, hunkered low to minimize the chance of attracting notice.

The wind shifts, bringing with it the smell of overheated plastic, and not from the direction of the firefight where it might be laid at the feet of weapons fire and strange magic. She glances over towards the outhouse and the trail of smoke beginning to rise from it. Apparently, the Sylphid she's trapped has some manner of control over fire. That...might be a problem in a couple of minutes. It isn't, she decides, a problem that needs immediate attention.

"Let's go for two," Marc answers. The weight of the thing will take it down without having to blow all four supports; with luck, they'll only need to blow two before it'll come down. Without luck, three.

Two more of the Sylphid guards are down, dead, and a third is bleeding profusely with both hands clutched to his gut. Marc rushes the remaining guard, bowling her over before she can get her weapon back up.

"Roger," she says. That's all that's needed, acknowledgment that she's heard and agreed.

She crouches by the second leg of the tower to set the second charge, registering the relative quiet. Relative, because there's still the snarl of protest from the Sylphid guard who's just been bodyslammed, and the low groans from the one being gutshot, and the crackle and pop of sizzling plastic, but the gunfire has, for the moment, stopped.

If they're lucky, it will stay that way. If they're not lucky, well, at least they should hear any backup coming.

Marc is prepared to do whatever it takes to get his final guard down. First? Clubbing her in the face with the butt of his own gun. That's enough to daze her for a second bash, leaving her unconscious and with a bloody face. The gutshot guard's gun he takes for himself, since that's the only threat left to him.

He stays crouched down over her, wary of potential backup, ears straining for voices or running footsteps, or for Layla's word to go. "Think we got time to set a third or you wanna blow the first two and see if that'll do it?" he asks, voice low.

"I'll set the third," she replies. "I'd rather be certain than have to--"

She cuts off with a hiss as the feedback along that slim connection forged by her newfound powers abruptly changes, as either the fire reaches the door, or the Sylphid trapped inside rethinks his target. It isn't pain, exactly, because plastic has no nerve endings to conduct pain. It's a feeling of profound wrongness, and maybe a month from now, two months, six, she'd be able to maintain concentration through it and still manage to do something else, but right now?

Now, she sways slightly, bracing herself with one hand flat on the ground, fighting a surge of nausea at the sense that her bones have reshaped themselves inside her skin, flexing and stretching out of true. She withdraws her power with a gasp, and the door grates open, hanging wrong on its hinges where the fire had begun to buckle it. The trapped Sylphid staggers out, half-blind and choking - while others may be more fortunate, he, at least, didn't receive the ability to breathe smoke along with the pyrokinesis.

Oh shit. The way Layla cuts off has Marc leaping to his feet, ready to charge to the rescue.

Then the plastic door swings over and he yanks his gun up into position again. He fires through the smoke, aiming to take the new guard out before he can stumble right onto Layla just a few yards away.

The guard is not hard to hit, even with the haze of smoke - the trouble with coughing your lungs up on a battlefield is that it doesn't exactly leave you fit for battle. He falls, not dead, but dying. The grass around him, still damp from an earlier rainshower, sizzles sadly.

"Thanks," Layla gasps. Then, "Fuck. Not doing that again."

How often could holding something flammable against a pyrokinetic possibly come up? Probably more often than she's remotely comfortable with.

She gives her head a sharp shake to reorient her senses, forcing herself to ignore the nagging sense that her joints are going to flex in all the wrong directions as she pulls out the components for the third charge.

"Tell me all about it when we get outa here," Marc suggests. "Third charge down, then we run." He wants to look at her, to figure out what exactly she's talking about and make sure she's okay, but backup could show up any minute. They haven't been quiet. So he has to look away, focus in their surroundings, keep the gun ready for any heads that poke around a truck or over a ridge.

"In excruciating detail," she deadpans, more as a bid to let him know that she's intact than out of any real desire to go over that particular bit of sensory hell any more closely than she needs to.

Most of her focus is on the charge, keenly aware of the sensitivity of the task and the risk of getting caught. Her fingers feel thick, and she forces herself to slow down and avoid the rookie mistake of going for the rush job.

Finally, after what feels like an age and is perhaps a quarter of a minute longer than the first two took, she calls, "Third charge set."

There are no more gunshots or flares of light while she does. At the signal, he breaks into a run, telling her, "Go, go, go! We'll blow it when we're clear!" She has the detonator. They can't get too far or it won't work, but they don't want to be near enough for the damn thing to fall on them.

Also, he heard a radio sputter and a voice go through asking for an update. They're going to get incoming soon, and he wants to be out of the way before then.

She shoves herself to her feet, forcing herself past a brief spike of disoriented dizziness and into a sprint. They don't need to get too much distance to get beyond the hazard zone, between the shaped charges and the tower's height. She still waits until they've made the treeline beyond the perimeter cleared for the tower and its guards before she keys the detonator - if the lack of immediate response to the demand for a status report doesn't bring a patrol running, the sound of the charges going off absolutely will. Better to start from cover, the better to allow them the chance to make it back to their own transport without being caught.

The charges going off make a deceptively quiet sound: muffled whumping sounds, one after another. It's the ominous creaking of metal that really catches one's attention. Marc doesn't look back, he just makes sure Layla is ahead of him and still running before trying to pick up speed.

But he's laughing a little, too. They did it. The creaking, while getting further away, is getting louder, and then there's a tremendous crash. They're too far away to hear any shouts of alarm.

She doesn't let out a whoop of triumph at the sound of the tower collapsing - she's no longer twenty, and she needs the oxygen besides. She doesn't slow for another few hundred metres, as the brush continues to thicken, to the point where an approach that obscures their passage becomes more useful than raw speed.

Then she looks over at Marc, only then realizing just how much attention she's been paying to the sound of his footfalls, and grins, quick and fierce and a little wild.

"Don't think they'll be putting that one back up."

"Nope, they will not," Marc grins back, and pulls the compass out of his pocket to check their direction, changing the angle a little back towards their transport. Then he reaches out to catch her hand and squeeze. "Let's get back to town. Maybe order something expensive for dinner to celebrate after debrief."

That grin sends a jolt through her, warm and familiar, and for a second she's tempted to say the hell with debrief. But she's still not twenty, and wouldn't have been quite that irresponsible even when she was.

"We could even go out. Someplace quiet with a nice view, let someone else worry about cleanup." She strokes her thumb over the back of his knuckles. "You could come back to my place after. Make an evening of it."

The added touch and the promise of that suggestion sends a little thrill through Marc, too. He keeps her hand, even if it'll wind up a little awkward pushing through jungle. "That sounds like a really good plan. I'm in if you are."

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September Catch-All [OTA]

IV

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