He said, stop what you're doing, get down on your knees [OPEN]

[tidesnpc]

Characters: The crew of Serenity
Content: Rescue mission in a dock warehouse!
Setting: A warehouse on the outskirts of Bydan
Time: Evening
Warnings: Violence

Comments

WAREHOUSE FLOOR

[tidesnpc]

The center of the warehouse is dominated by a towering cluster of gears and other mechanisms - a giant difference engine, humming with electricity. The technicians running around it seem to be very concerned about possible damage to it from gunfire.

The remainder of the space is a maze of shelving and crates, providing plenty of cover. You may want to be careful where you shoot, though - who knows what these clowns have stored in here. Some of it just might be flammable.

[windsofdaytime]

Kaoru had had a lot of time to think.

Think, mostly, about things she hadn't had any reason to question before. They were taking her somewhere, that much was certain. Maybe back to the facility. They needed someone like her. If they were talking about her wind powers, they could have gotten any mage with that affinity, so they probably meant the other thing. The power of destruction. Maybe the other subjects would be there, too. Bright, at least. They wouldn't send Windy without Bright. What about the others? Hopefully not. They were, by and large, nuisances. She hadn't cared about the ones who had died, and her own partner aside, she didn't care about the ones who were left.

Caring about people. That was the big thing again. Why?

Why was she thinking about this?

It didn't matter, she thought, standing guarded and giving off her usual unimpressed stare. There was a fate she was born into. This was it.

Including some NPC crewmembers

[takemesir]

The path through the delivery bay had been more hectic than anticipated, but they'd managed to push on through. Here was where the real action was occurring; Zoë didn't know what that huge pile of machinery was doing, but it looked important, and the guards were certainly treating it like it was. If Kaoru was still here, she'd be somewhere on the warehouse floor. She was sure of it.

"Fan out!" she barked as they began to come under fire. She ducked down behind a crate, trying to get her bearings on the surrounding area.

[son_of_the_lake]

After the altercation at the reception area, Hisoka hurtled onto the warehouse floor, skidded around a couple of massive crates, and took a good look around. He began to work his way along the banks of shelving. The crack of gunfire had began in the direction of the delivery entrance, and so he went quietly in that direction.

[windsofdaytime]

Kaoru looked up. She couldn't see anything, aside from her handlers rushing about like a bunch of lunatics, but she knew what guns sounded like. Who would come in here? Very stupid gangsters? No, it... didn't sound like that.

Her lightless eyes widened as she tuned out the guards' voices and focused in on the invaders. That... no. No.

"Idiots." She glared at the guards around her and shoved one of them aside. "They're after me. Somebody here told them about me." Kaoru's glare and the dark energy gathering in her hand said one thing: I'll deal with this myself.

They want to kill me, and I'm very hard to kill.

[takemesir]

Zoë poked her head out, and nearly got it shot off by one of the guards. She retreated back behind cover, cursing quietly through her teeth.

"Damn," she said to herself. "At this rate we're not going to get anywhere."

She turned her face upwards to make her voice project further, and then shouted above the firefight as best she could: "KAORU! You there, girl?"

[son_of_the_lake]

Hisoka had heard Zoe call to her team, and then shout for Kaoru. He listened in the direction from which he had come, wondering that the guards from the reception area (those that could still stand, that is!) had not yet come after him. Maybe they had, and were simply being wary.

He really wanted Kaoru to know that he was here, too, but he thought that at this moment it might be better not to alert the guards that yet another Serenity crew member had made it onto the warehouse floor. So he kept silent, and kept moving in the direction of Zoe's voice.

[windsofdaytime]

In response, a round of black energy shot down and put a smoking hole in the warehouse floor. Kaoru emerged on top of a pile of crates -- had she jumped up there? -- and began to charge more energy into her hands.

"So you are after me."

[surfaceshine]

Dean was not actually having a good time of this; he was on board with the whole rescue plan, of course he was, but somehow spending his bullets shooting at humans instead of monsters felt like dirty work to him. Not, mind you, that he was unaware that not all monsters were the literal, physical kind, but there was something satisfying about sinking lead into a creature just before it tore his face off

[takemesir]

Zoë didn't bother commenting on the 'sweetheart' descriptor. She had more important things on her mind at the moment.

She wasn't sure exactly what she'd been expecting. But it certainly wasn't this. Old instincts were kicking in, sending the hairs on the back of her neck straight up. They might be in very deep trouble right now.

"Kaoru," she called out to her over the din. "We're here to rescue you, honey!"

She made a point of keeping her weapon pointed down at the ground while she said that. Didn't want to accidentally make any threatening gestures.

[son_of_the_lake]

Hisoka felt a tremendous reverberation in the cement floor through the soles of his feet. The ozone scent of destruction was in the air, and acrid, rolling smoke. He sprinted to the end of the row of shelves, and suddenly he had a clear view of Kaoru, barely twenty yards away, standing high on a heap of crates, and dark energy was gathering between her hands.

He couldn't see Zoe; a crate was blocking his view. He knew where Dean was as soon as he spoke, though he couldn't see him either.

[windsofdaytime]

One of the guards waved his gun at her. "Get back where you were, 65L--"

"I've earned a name, you know. It's Windy." Kaoru fired the ball of dark energy just in front of the man's feet, leaving a smoking hole in the floor. He promptly shut up.

She leapt from the top of the crate in between the two camps and surveyed her rescue party. "You wouldn't be here to save me. You destroyed the last weapon you came across, didn't you?" Again the energy gathered in her hands as she ran forward. "Besides... this is fate, and I can't just change who I belong to, so don't lie to me!"

[takemesir]

Zoë tried to protest. "We really are! Why would we come all the way here to--"

She cut off as she saw Kaoru running for her. She dove away to the side, shouting: "Oh hell."

[surfaceshine]

It was an easy choice. Dean had leaned a bit to be able to watch the exchange, and both eyebrows went up over hard green eyes that narrowed when Kaoru reprimanded the guard. His jaw tensed and his grip tightened on the grip of the Impala; his automatic mental count told him he had three rounds in her before he'd have to reload. Now did not seem like a particularly good time, because he kind of knew what was coming next

[son_of_the_lake]

Everybody was going to get killed, at this rate.

Well, don't let's miss the suicide party! Hisoka flashed across the distance and hurled his body at Dean's, a hundred and twenty-five pounds of tough sinew and dense bone, intending to knock him sideways out of the way. Because if there was one thing he was certain of, it was that Kaoru would simply adjust her aim and blast Dean to cinders without a thought. Even if he got a shot off first, he would still be dead. And once Kaoru had killed one of them, why would she stop at killing the rest? And they would be lost, and she would be lost, too.

[windsofdaytime]

Kaoru skidded to a stop on the floor when Dean moved in front of her. Her expression didn't change at having a gun pointed at her face. She simply brought her hands together and continued to charge up the ball of whatever power was running through her. As it grew larger, it went from black to dark purple.

Then Hisoka made his running tackle at Dean, and Kaoru's lifeless eyes snapped wide open. "You--!"