Night 55: North of the Institute

[razing_phoenix]

[From here.]Hitting the ground hard, Guy clenched his teeth when the impact hit his ankles; he hadn't had the time to really plan his fall. Still, he had avoided any sort of serious injury, and after taking a moment to recover, he slowly got to his feet

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[lookitmemama]

Asuka hadn't been able to get in the last word and that really pissed her off. She had taken in a long breath, ready to counter his little comment, but it only quickened the strange mist into her lungs. Hacking began immediately, a rattling couch that dislodged phlegm and saliva onto the snow below. It was a disgusting sound in her ears, but knowing Taura was hacking right along with her, the embarrassment was sufferable.

"Sure..." Asuka croaked once she got her coughing under control. She couldn't recall where the weapon had landed, but it couldn't have gotten far.

Human, she heard the condescending word in her mind. She was human and damned proud of it! She may be only one, small, and flawed but she destroyed freaks of nature every day after school! Asuka had nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing!

Eventually, Asuka's stomping and huffing found the throwing-star. Picking it up gingerly, the redhead stalked up to the wall and stared. "How the heck am I supposed to get up this?!" With a frustrated grunt, the young girl moved a few meters away from where Taura had leaped over. "I'm tossing it on your left!" And with that, it was tossed gingerly over the wall while she figured out how she was getting over. It wasn't that high, but Asuka did not want to be seen huffing and puffing like a new recruit at boot camp trying to drag her ass over a cement wall.

So, she followed the flow of the wind and found a section of the wall that had been covered unusually high with snow. It gave her a good ten inch boost to jump and scramble over the wall.

"Well, now that that's over with, where exactly are we going?"

[ninelivesonce]

The shout was reassuring -- she hadn't been sure how much of Asuka's recovery had been genuine and how much bravado.  More of the former, it seemed.  Good.  Bravado had it's place, but running on it at the beginning of a mission wasn't guts, it was suicide.

"All I know was that Marc was holed up somewhere to the north.  That way,"  Taura added, pointing.  Yellow eyes squinted into the snow in the same direction, but the visibility was awful.  About the best that she could say was that the moonlight was pretty bright.  "I've never been out here, so your guess is as good as mine from here out."

She could think of worse scouting conditions.  Maybe.  Buried in hostile territory, no map, not even a well-defined objective, and while the snow was some cover, they were starting from a well-known position.  Miles, help!  Lost causes are your department,!  At least she could laugh at herself -- just the thought seemed to add a degree or two to the temperature.

She walked over to where the throwing star had landed, and used a bit of the snow and the hem of her pants to clean it off before sliding it back into her improvised holster.  Standing back up straight made her head swim -- maybe a gentle walk was a good idea, at least until they'd gotten a little more of this clean air into their lungs.  "You okay?  Sorry I couldn't wait to give you a hand over the wall, but I figured one of us should get under cover.  I'd have come back, I promise."  She smiled, which triggered another cough, but this one wasn't quite as bad.

She set a slow pace north, keeping her strides to something Asuka could match, but steady even if sedate.

I'll move them onward

[lookitmemama]

"Wonderful," Asuka groused before tossing her second leg over the wall and dropping her radio onto the soft snow below. Her knees gave out when she hit the ground, but the redhead was beyond dignity now. They both had seen what became of her after an attack from a freakazoid.

Now that she was back on her feet and her adrenaline had faded, the eva pilot felt like someone had just been, well, thrown to the hard ground. The bump on the back of her head was a center of pain that throbbed in time with her heartbeat. This was no longer fun--actually, it stopped being fun when a tentacle grabbed her and tossed her in the air. Her capacity for humor at this point was dwindling fast. That usual arrogance that touched her features had made room for the irritation she felt.

"North then. Let's go," Asuka said stiffly, despite Taura's having already started the trek through snow. It needed to be said for her own good. Taura needed to know the second child was on this, whatever that entailed.

[ninelivesonce]

Taura could understand being frustrated -- no one liked being helpless, but Asuka wasn't. She was on her feet and moving, and that said more about her than any words could, all of it good.

She didn't ask if Asuka was all right; she trusted her to make that call herself. Besides, they'd do better to keep moving. It was cold out, and the wind wasn't getting any less cutting. They walked in silence for a while, except for the muffled sound of feet trudging through snow.

"I wish I knew how much we could trust Marc," she said, voice barely loud enough to carry to Asuka. "This whole business has disaster area written all over it, and there's only so many times I can beat the odds, yeah?" Despite the gloomy words, she sounded more pensive than depressed.

[lookitmemama]

"You're telling me! I've never been so close to death since I joined the History Club and I killed angels back home. Two days I've been helping out and I've almost been shot into swiss cheese and molested by a tentacle!" Asuka finished her rant with a huff as she wrapped her arms tightly around her chest for more warmth. The chill hadn't been so bad when they began this, but it was quickly seeping in through her clothes.

Just one more thing to add to the list!

Cold and in pain, the little girl kept her complaints to herself, though a few grumbles occasionally slipped through. She began to notice her gate was a bit rickety. The distance between the two of them was widening and her visions was starting to grow fuzzy around the edges. Wary of these telltale signs, Asuka stopped, bent over, and waited for the inevitable. It wasn't freezing because of the snow; she had been going into shock after she hit the ground. After one phlegmy cough, the redhead vomited up a pink mess of dinner and perhaps lunch into the snow.

Just rub salt into the wounds, why don't you!

This was just unbelievable! Did her humiliation know no boundaries? Afraid to look anywhere around Taura's vicinity, the eva pilot covered her mess with snow and got to her feet on shaky legs. Her pinched face glared at the ground as she made her way to the older woman, all the while screaming within.

At least she felt a bit better.

[ninelivesonce]

Angels? That had to mean something different on other planets, because all the angels Taura had run across had been confined to paintings, most of them old and dusty. Or metaphors -- but that didn't make any sense out of killing them. One thing was very clear -- whatever angels were, Asuka wasn't helpless, or hadn't been. She'd fought, and killed, and belonged on this team.

Even while vomiting. Taura politely looked the other way as Asuka's guts made the best escape attempt she'd seen in weeks. Hah.

Though -- where did the trash go? And was that such a bad escape route? It was if they incinerated it. Or shredded it, or any of the things people did with trash dirtside.

When Asuka had rejoined her, Taura put on her best Ellie Quinn Reviews The Troops face, and looked at her. It was still a little weird being the one doing the looking, rather than the raw recruit, but she was getting used to it. It just took a little longer to fit right on her. "This isn't a suicide mission. If you can't continue, tell me." She left it at that -- they could trust one another, and giving Asuka the benefit of the doubt could only hurt her, if she was too stubborn for her own good.

will move

[lookitmemama]

"I'm fine! I just--my dinner obviously didn't sit well with me. Man was not meant to eat a gelatinous nutritional substitute..." It was a pretty thin excuse, but anything sounded better than the pathetic truth.

"Besides, I'd like to get something done for once at night. I go out, I have to yell at someone along the way, and then it's morning again! So annoying...!" Her foot kicked up a clot of snow into the air to relieve some of the weight from the dark cloud hovering over her head.

[lookitmemama]

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