Wrecking the Sphere

[Skyburn]

- By Reason's guidance, Hail walked to Castle Smoke, redoning his dark gray trenchcoat. He still couldn't believe how beaten up this city was, yet much of it still stood in some manner. Hail Briggs chewed at his left thumbnail. While still being in a state of semi-alertness, he was in deep thought. From the little information of the Vampire's tower he had, the teenager had already formulated a massive rescue plan in his mind. It was extensively Paramilitary oriented, something he knew that many didn't like much, because it required someone to have almost complete control over strategy, and only through them did movements happen, which meant that others could easily consider themselves just pawns instead of vital components of a team. It limited them to special places, too. Instead of being a one-man army, they had to be a unit. But if they were organized, this could go off without a hitch. If it went perfectly, they might get in without the Vampires knowing they had gotten in and out with their prisoners. That was a best case scenario. Worst case being that they get swarmed by Vampires and die. Of course, death was always involved in his worst case scenarios, because that was of course, worst case. Scratch that. Capture and torture was worst case. Watching everyone die before him because his plan failed. That alone would be torture.

- Hail looked back at Reason. "By the way, how old are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?[/color] He never was good with age. She merely looked about his age, perhaps a bit younger, but that speculation was due to height.[/size]

[Seraphim]

[Alright. Here’s how we’re gonna jump this thread into action, people. Because I had no plan, and Skybrun did, this is how it’s going to run: Hail and Reason will recruit Deadeye, and intercept the rescue team before it gets to the Tower, giving them the fright of their lives. Reason installs Hail as tactical commander and backs him up with her authority in Seraphim’s absence. We follow Skyburn’s plan, get Seraph and Dancer the hell out of that damned tower, and have Hail promoted to Hunter.

All good?]

“Eighteen, nineteen sometime early next year,” Reason responded, leading the way towards and inside Castle Smoke. It was one of the less pathetic buildings, thanks largely to Alexander’s apprentice builders skill. How the son of a rich businessman came to be a builder’s apprentice was beyond Reason’s comprehension, but it gave them some power, some running water, and a better sewage system than most. Daisuke’s wind-turbines had been built by Alexander before Reason got here, and she had been glad for the power from the moment she realized her reloadable batteries would need a powerpoint to reload.

Reason decided to go straight to her office so she could orchestrate things from there. She’d get someone to fetch Axel and she’d find a spot for Hail to stay until they could have a proper bed set up in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs. “But let me give you some advice. Ignore age around here. We’ve got 12-year-olds who scare the holy bejesus out of kids six years older.”

Reason shoved open the door to her office-bedroom, the careworn desk already cluttered with reports. She suppressed a grimace, motioned Hail into the room, and looked outside, stopping a startled Daisuke in his tracks and ordering him to fetch Axel and Deadeye before she slid back into the room, pushing the door closed.

[Skyburn]

- Hail gave a little smile, entering the room before the door was closed. "I know what you mean. I've met kids about eight years old who could probably scare a ghost right back to Hell. Myself, I'll be 18 in about... what is it, late October right about now?... a month or so."[/color] He leaned against a wall, closing his eyes. In his mind he had a simple layout for the building. Entrance, room with an elevator shaft, and a basement at the bottom of the elevator shaft. He hoped there were no suprises. His mind drifted to the current building they were in. He was suprised at how well they had fixed the place up. He half-expected it to be a shack with blankets as wall dividers to separate the boys side from the girls side, and half expected it to be little more than this.

- Hail would need someone to hold his hand for about a few weeks until he was accustomed. If his plan worked, he hoped he'd hardly be viewed as a burden. "So, what's first on the agenda? Personally, the rescue is what I'd say, even if I'm not aclimated just yet. If those two... Seraph and what's-her-name, are prisoners like you said, then we can't wait much longer. They may not even have a day or two."[/color][/size]

[Mina Crow]

[Purrfect. But due to the time difference, shouldn't you be posting somewhere else?

Now get posting, Mask.]

[Seraphim]

[Ho-uhm, I have a perfectly good reason for sending Hail here. It means we don't have to flicker between threads alla time. If it gets a little confusing - heck, makes it more fun.]

[Skyburn]

((Seraphim, your turn.))

[Seraphim]

Reason motioned to a chair, cleared earlier when John had been there. She took her seat behind her heavy desk. She smiled at Hail’s words, but her face darkened again as he mentioned Dancer and Seraphim. She took off her hat and hung it from the back of her chair, grimacing darkly. She took a deep breath, interlaced her fingers on the desk, and examined Hail over her steepled fingers.

“The Vampires are torturers over killers, and they know very well that killing Seraphim at the least will end with as much blood on their side as ours – unless either Seraph or Dancer really, really offends Mina, they’ll be alive at the least. I’ve sent for Axel, whom I’m sure has a plan already. I’ll get Deadeye to show you around.”

She thought there was a spare room upstairs where Hail could stay, unless someone didn’t mind sharing. With the recent activity stirring in the Wildcats and Vampires, the Cigarettes had been almost frantically recruiting and Reason was tempted to ask Alexander what it would take to patch up the building beside the Castle.

[Skyburn]

- Hail looked at her head, now sans hat, and could see her hair better, which almost made it look different. He nodded in response to her last sentence. "Deadeye... let me guess, really good eyesight or marksman or something?" Hail reverted back to the other statement. "And, well, sometimes torture can be a fate worse than death."[/color] He stopped himself from speaking further of the matter. This girl - woman - whatever she was to be considered at the present moment - had obviously known them, and further speaking of what could happen to them might not be welcome to her thoughts. He had probably gone too far already. Right now, he had no idea what to do, where to go, anything. He hated that feeling.[/size]

[Seraphim]

Reason felt her face flush again. She didn’t know Deadeye well – wasn’t too sure where he got his name, but she suspected it came from the guns he carried. Then again, it would be a very Cigarette-like joke if the guy couldn’t hit an elephant at point blank range. Some of the names – if not many – where like that. Nicknames came from very source imaginable, although usually it had to do with character.

“I wouldn’t be able to tell you,” she admitted. “Don’t know him well myself.”

Reason bit her lip. “Yes, torture is worse than death. I know, damnit,” Oh god, she was loosing her temper already, and with the subject of nicknames still in her mind, it seemed bitter irony that hers should now become relevant. “But I do not think that sending people into Vamp territory unready so they can be tortured too is right.”

[Skyburn]

- Obviously, further conversation about torture directly wasn't a good idea. "Which is why I'm considering anything that can go wrong with this as best I can. If I had a pencil and paper or something with the layout of the ground floor and basement level of this place, it would be easier to both describe to the assault party and to look for faults. Do you know anyone who could help us with that who won't try to thwart or kill us?" Hail had a slightly-uncurled fist at his chin and mouth, the tip of his thumb barely between his lips, as if he meant to bite his already short nail. The teenager would have moved from the wall and started pacing, but he wasn't that deep in a train of though. "We don't have to be skilled fighters for this; we don't need to have many weapons, as preferable as both of those things are. We just need to be able to deter them from stopping us." He almost followed up a few seconds later with 'screw that!' he could already tell that these 'Vampires' probably didn't scare so easily. However... they were mostly kids, were they not? Kids didn't harden that much from survival, at least not in the fear aspect of things. All you needed was a guy with a gun, sword, knife, anything that could do damage, really...
- There were too many unknowns, at least for Hail to be completely comfortable, but that didn't say a lot. He was confident they could do this, but comfortable? That was something else. What they could do, what they couldn't, what the opponent would do, et cetera. They had to know the Cigarettes would try something. That was it. Hail thought to himself. Reason would surely notice his face brighten. "What do the Vampires expect us to do? We have to work around that. I don't think they'll expect us to consider that. Almost no one ever does." Like one big game of chess.

[Seraphim]

“As soon as Daisuke gets back I’ll have him draw a map. He’s got a memory like a computer – he’s hasn’t been inside but he’s heard stories and estimated a map a few weeks ago.” Reason scratched the back of her neck, thinking with her eyes closed. Alright, so how many people did they have? About twelve, she thought, she could gather into an attack group if Axel hadn’t already. And skill? That ranged between deadly and unable to hit a wall at point-blank.

“I don’t have a clue what the Vampires will expect,” she said suddenly. “I don’t even know how I would have attacked the place, let alone what the Vampires expect us to do.” She flicked a strand of fiery hair out of her face, interlaced her fingers and tapped her toes. “Well. If they think Seraphim is anything to go by, they’ll expect a full-on brute force attack. But then, they might not even think we’ll come. They know we aren’t the military type.”

[Skyburn]

"So, we'll be the military type. I'd think they'd expect a full on assualt. That's what kids usually do anyway. Until I get a good map of the building, I probably won't be able to plan anything extraordinary about how to do this. I'd expect there to a lobby, with an elevator at the back, and a straight shot from the front door to the elevator, since that's how most buildings are. A front desk probably... we'll need to check for traps."[/color] He caught himself rambling again. Hail ended the digression and moved back to the point. "I might want to change that plan. If and when they expect us to attack, the front door will be obvious. If possible, we go through as many back entrances at possible. If it's a big business, a loading dock would be nice, since most of us could get in at once. That's all I can come up with."[/color] Hail Briggs crossed his legs in front of himself, scooting down the wall a few inches so his legs could stick out more. Both hands went behind his neck. "Wait. Can you find a working car? I'm sure there has got to be one around here, in an auto-body shop or at a dealership. Most of them these days are hydrogen power, so getting fuel for it won't be too hard. A car would be nice for an escape, at least to get the two prisoners as far away as we can."[/size]

[Seraphim]

Car? Oh, yeah right. They’d searched, but so far had been unlucky. Most had exploded when the city was cremated. Sure, Reason would have betted her life that Daisuke could bring a car back from beyond the grave just with what he learnt on the Internet, but they’d have to find the fuel, and the parts, and someone who could navigate the rubble. They’d need a four-wheel drive just to get out of the ghetto, likely as not. Maybe she would hire Swart to find car somewhere. That man could find anything this side of the rainbow.

“Car? Not likely, but I can set someone to searching.” She tapped her fingers against the desk. “Chances are, the Vampires have blocked all the back entrances, but I can ask Daisuke if he’s ever heard of one. Great gods of nowhere, we need a spy in their camp, don’t we?”

She paused, her fingers stopping in mid tap. “Daisuke builds bombs,” she said quite suddenly. “Would that help?”

[Skyburn]

- Hail looked up from his train of thought, his face brightening immensely, like a kid who had gotten exactly what he had wanted for Christmas. "How powerful?" Bombs were always helpful. To Hail Briggs, they were like his own version of duct tape. The guy was slightly a pyro. He loved to burn things and blow things up as much, if not just a bit more, as the next guy. Firepower was one of his true loves. These things better not be just firecrackers; he hoped they had the power of at least two pounds of SEMTEX or C4, and no more than twelve pounds of either... that might be too much, even though seeing the Vampire's little tower implode downwards would be quite cool.
-"Yes, a spy would be good... but... that might not work out with our time frame, unless..."[/color] he reverted back to one of his original plans, "...unless I'm not in the strike team,"[/color] he elaborated, "they still don't know who I am or that I exist. If I backtrack to where I came in, I may be able to join them as a lower-ranked person. If I leave now, I may be able to pull sentry-duty for them tonight, hopefully alone. If not, all I have to do is slit the throat of the guy I'm with. It'd be too simple to just let you guys in with an inside job. Hell, I might be able to just get them out all by myself, but I wouldn't chance that."[/color] His face gloomed a little for a second. That meant they wouldn't need explosives. Oh well, they'd bring them anyway. Certainly they wouldn't want to pull an Odysseus and throw those explosives back into the building and let the Vampires know they were there. That was just arrogant and they might end up cursed, being forced to roam the Aegean and Mediterranean Sea s for ten years, and fight many mythical creatures. Or end up dead. Either, or.[/size]

[Seraphim]

“You sound like a Wharf Rat, do you know that? No, you probably don’t, but you do,” Reason muttered under her breath. “Look, I have no idea what kind of entrance exam they make you sit when you’re with the Vampires but doubtless it involves killing something, and at the moment that something will probably be a Cigarette. I don’t know about you, but the spy job doesn’t sound right. Part of the reason we haven’t tired yet is that were’ afraid of what the initiation will involve.”

Reason shuffled some papers, checking her watch. Where were Axel and Deadeye? And Daisuke, for that matter – she hadn’t the slighting fucking clue how powerful one of his bombs was. They were the insides of clocks, batteries, parts of used chemistry sets – anything he could get his hands on. In that way, he was often a nuisance – although eh built useful things from scrap, just as often he took something useful apart and built scrap. They could hardly afford to sacrifice a good, working clock for a battery-powered mixer.

“The only thing I could imagine is for us to do the unthinkable (until now, mostly on Serenity’s orders and only partly on Seraphim’s, though you’ll not know Serenity,) and catch a Vampire, get the information that way. Though where we’re going to find one is beyond me, and how we’re going to get the to talk to us is something I don’t even want to think about right now."

[Skyburn]

- And once again, Hail smiled. "Capture one? Well..."[/color] again, it took him only a couple of seconds to come up with another half-thought out plan, but it would develop further as he spoke, and perfected only when he was in sight of his objective, literally as it were, "... with what I'm planning, in lue of the spy idea, I may be able to capture two Vampires for you, if they have two sentries. Granted, we'd have to start the assault within about five minutes of that capturing, but it would certainly help. Heck, the two we capture, granted that there are at least two ground sentries to the lobby, can even be used as lackys to carry back Seraph and that girl. All we have to do is modify that little spying idea to being just a little, 'Hey, can I join? Bam, bam... Okay, Cigarettes, the area is clear.' Speaking of that, that's pretty much my whole plan on getting inside apart from the fact we wouldn't actually shoot the guys, just hold them prisoner ourselves."[/color] Hail unsheathed his sword, which glimmered in the light, and held it up to his throat and arched his neck towards it to give her a picture, even though he was sure she had one.
- "By the way, I'll need to get this sharpened after the raid." Moving it from his throat, he turned towards the wall and rapped the tip of the blade against it a few times, in an extremely rapid series of motions before pulling it vertically up towards his face as he turned back towards Reason. He rotated the sword once more with his wrist so that he could see the thinner side of the blade itself more clearly. To him, the few small nicks and crevaces made by hitting things were very apparent, not because he knew the weapon, but because he knew what to look for in just looking at a blade. In a blur of motion, he dipped his wrist and pulled his elbow towards him, allowing himself to spin the sword around a few times, creating a whirring sound as the feeble, or the last few inches, of the saber started breaking the sound barrier. Few people knew what that sound of moving something rather long through the air actually was; it was just that, an object moving faster than sound.[/size]

[Seraphim]

Reason moved backwards as the saber cut the air, and her eyes were virtually glued to the point. She clicked her tongue when Sky was done, then put her hands on her lap and thought about his suggestion. Well, certainly, it would be a brilliant idea – if it worked. She didn’t want to take the risk that Mina would put Hail through some sort of violent hazing – she wouldn’t have worried so much if this were a raid and she had all her Cigarettes back at the Castle – but who knew what Mina would do now she had Seraphim? For all Reason knew, Mina would make Hail hurt Seraphim or Dancer. Perhaps even kill them.

“I don’t know. I think just doing what they expect – run at them, fight them off while someone finds and fetches the prisoners, and then leg it out of there somehow, might be best. We might even get away with asking the Wharf Rats to let us use their sewers to get out.” Reason said, frowning. “We have the forces for that, but I don’t know how many of us really ready for this cloak and dagger stuff.”

She shook her head and rose to her feet. “Come on, let’s go find Deadeye and Axel.”

[Skipto: several hours later.]

Reason rolled her shoulders against the bag she was carrying, staring back at the Castle. It was late – just a few hours before midnight, if she was right. She had no idea where the others were in the darkness, but they were supposed to meet here before setting out. The others being: Deadeye, hopefully, and Hail. Axel would go with his own party, and wouldn’t know about Reason until she commandeered both.

[Seraphim]

[Ladies and gentlemen, I appologize for not having been here. I figure, though, that it's about time we moved on. Sky already posted in Rhymes - lets give them hell, ciggies!]