Rebirth (A Code Geass Fanfic)

[Berk]

I'm currently looking for a few brave souls to help me out as a sounding board as I try to make a comeback into the wild, wild world of fanfic writing.
Alas, this won't be me coming back to work on SME though, I'm experimenting with other ideas though.

Current projects I'm tinkering with:

• Blood Will Tell, a Mugen Senshi Valis fic, with special guest appearances by other characters by the Wolf Team,
  such as everyone's favorite scion of Hastur, Annet Meyer.
  
  
• A Code Geass fic tenativly named Rebirth, a continuation fic with a twist or three. (Who would seriously be
  expecting a twist in a Geass fanfic, really?)
  

Fair warning: I'm much further along with developing the Valis fic, and really would like to write something more fantasy related right now. So that
fic would probably take the forefront.

EDIT: I'm gonna post parts of the story in this thread, as I cook up parts. If folks want to comment, poke holes, whatever, feel free. I'm not really
sure if that's the best way of going about things.. but if folks want me to take it elsewhere, I will. If not. Well. Game on.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Bluemage]

I'm not familiar with Valis, but I can offer ideas and responses for a Geass fic, as well as spelling/grammar corrections for either or both. Don't
let me fully rewrite anything, though: I have a tendency towards purple prose.

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[CattyNebulart]

A Code Geass fic tenativly named Rebirth, a continuation fic with a twist or three. (Who would seriously be expecting a twist in a Geass fanfic, really?)

I dunno man, plot twist in a Code Geass fic is moving kinda far from the source isn't it? /sarcasm

I would offer to help but I am too busy with other things.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Black Aeronaut]

I'm a bit busy at my end, but I can provide assistance in the areas of grammar and spelling, as well as a bit of editorial assistance in making scenes flow
a bit better. Seriously, I've seen a few authors on ff.net with some drop-dead awesome stories, except they couldn't write without confusing the hell
out of you about three times per chapter. If you'd like to see a sample of my own work, look no further than Fenspace. However, if you like to see more
then by all means, email me:

black(no space)aeronaut('at' sign)g(oogle)mail('dot' sign).com

[Berk]

Blood Will Tell is getting taken off the list for now as I had a deranged idea that I'm going to be using several of my ideas for it for. Which, for those
who were in favor of just looking at the Geass fic will probably be happy about.

(I figure, if I'm doing THAT much world building to make a side scrolling platform as old as Metroid into a fic, I may as well make something original.)
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[ECSNorway]

I'd love to see the Code Geass fic.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Berk]

As I just got back from watching my sister walk for her Masters, a bit of a teaser in celebration.

---

A man's voice speaks, it has a slightly clipped tone, as if he were a man accustomed to military precision and finds it difficult to speak in any format
that does not involve a quick and rapid report to a superior officer, "In the year 2303 atb, the 40th year of the reign of Empress Rose vi Britannia II, a
crisis arose concerning the succession to the throne. Rose II's eldest son had died in an accident and the Empress herself was in poor health, leaving the
direct line of succession on the shoulders of the newborn child of her son. The choice of who would become the child's regent in the event that the Empress
perished caused the nobility of Britannia to fragment." A map appears on the screen of world, revealing a much reduced Britannian influence on the world
stage. As he continues to speak, the Britannian map breaks down further, several different coats of arms appearing, centered on different regions. The
largest of these includes the northeastern part of the North American continent.

"In the confusion of a brief and vicious civil war, the heir to the throne vanished without a trace before the United Nations could step in to restore
peace. According to popular belief at the time, the Empress had been so stricken with grief over having lost both her only child and first grandchild in such a
short time that she withdrew entirely from public life, leaving many of the day-to-day functions of imperial rule to a Regent, the Duke of New York."
Several parts of the fragmented Britannian state reassemble themselves, though the western half of the Empire, from the Rocky Mountains west, remains
unresolved.

"People will believe what they want to believe. In the year 2322 the truth will no longer be kept silent."

A cut.

A woman, little more than a girl really, staggers in from a door. It seems to be a lab somewhere, but most of the lights are out. She seems to be held
together as much with bandages as anything else and her one, visible eye shows signs of madness. A vacant grin splits her face as she intones, "The Fear
is going to swallow you up."

Another cut.

A woman's hand, clad entirely in a black, matte finish glove with a subtle gripping surface on the inside, the hand is pointing to the right side of the
screen through darkness. "What are you doing here? Who are you? According to our records the only thing here is supposed to be Zero's final trump
card, his restored Knightmare from the War of Two Kings."

Another hand, a man's hand, but very slight, bare. The cuff of either a heavy, black shirt or a coat can be seen falling from the wrist, the hand does not
point but instead gestures the first and middle fingers extended, the thumb slack and the ring and pinky fingers curled up loosely. It points in opposition to
the first hand. "You came seeking a weapon and only found a man?" the owner of the hand inquires, "If a weapon I am than I weapon I shall
be."

A rapid series of cuts follows.

Hands spider their way across a pair of keyboards, at a great rate of speed.

A woman with veins bulging out at her temples begins to laugh hysterically as blood seeps from her nose.

A different woman chuckles as the skin on her arm splits open slightly at the shoulder, the injury forming the Sign of the Geass. Her other hand quickly moves
to coil a bandage around the injury.

The man from earlier, who suggested he could 'be a weapon' snarls, "You may not break into the storehouse of God and expect to escape without
punishment!"

A huge display over what can only be Times Square, three hundred years in the future, suddenly fills with static, and a moment later the image of a figure
dressed entirely in black and violet appears on the screen, a familiar, black mask concealing his features. "From beyond the grave has the blood of
Britannia's sins called me forth once more." The figure pauses for a moment and sweeps his arms out. "I am ZERO!"

A teacup lowers down and places itself in a saucer as the camera swings outwards, revealing a high backed chair sitting on a grassy hill that exists nowhere on
Earth. High overhead hangs the ever watchful gaze of Jupiter over the scene and, here and there, various portraits float in the sky without any visible means
of support. "Ah. I feel like a proper Britannian gentleman again..." murmurs the voice of the man who described himself as a weapon.

---

More later.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Bluemage]

"More later", you say?

Then I can only give my thanks, as that teaser was most intriguing. I want to know. I want to know everything. Who is alive, the future genealogy of the
Code, how Cobra Unit is connected with all of this, and, of course, which Zero was on the screen.

You realize that I'm going to be lying in bed tonight, wide awake, dreaming up every far-future Code Geass possibility that my imagination can support?
And that it's all your fault?

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Berk]

Just as a note: Cobra Unit has NOTHING to do with 'The Fear.'

Rebirth has nothing at all to do with series outside of Code Geass.. be it written, coded into a game, animated or drawn.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Bluemage]

That comment was 7/8 joke... but apparently tone of voice doesn't translate into text very well.



Guess I have to start using those thrice-cursed emoticons when I want to make a funny..

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Berk]

Alas, my own sense of humor is a bit broken.

In the meantime.. here, have a commercial break.

---

The Duke of New York's success in suppressing the rebellion in rogue Commonwealths of Britannia can be largely attributed to the resounding success of his
elite special forces group codenamed The Specials. Their identities are strictly confidential and where they live and mobilize from is a closely held state
secret. An image appears on the screen of several presumed women, dressed in identical grey and black piloting suits, features masked by helmets with
reflective visors. Each of the women wears a cloak over this suit, displaying a symbol worked into the fabric, similar to Zero's Black Knights save that
the sigil is red instead of silver.

In this era of declining Sakuradite reserves, the Duke's Specials have made full use of innovations in alternative eergy sources to provide Britannia with
a strong military backbone to defend itself against those who would erode it from within and without. This new generation of Landframes has granted the Duke
the ability to guide the nation and defend it for the day when the Boy Who Will Be Emperor, Leon vi Britannia may assume the throne.

But questions still remain.

Images appear of heavier Knightmare Frames, Landframes, rolling down streets. Each one of these bears the image of The Specials somewhere on its chassis.

Who are The Specials? What is the source of their amazing success?

And just when will Emperor Leon I assume the throne?

---

- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Berk]

1000 words (or so) down. Here's the first part. Sorry about double posting but, there you are.

My own criticism of this part mostly involves the end of the sample. It feels weak to me, rather like I was petering out towards the end. I'll probably
shift to a higher gear and extend that particular flashback a little to make things feel a little more coherent in the final draft version.

---

Somewhere in the bowels of a facility built a hair under three hundred years before, a young woman worked her craft. It was a job with few truly skilled
practitioners left, but those who had survived to this era were among the best in the world. In an unpowered elevator car, she rummaged around in her belt and
produced a tube similar in design to a toothpaste tube, running a bead of the contents around in a circle on the floor wide enough to accommodate her
shoulders. She then pressed a small, eraser head sized piece of black material into the grey compound and, in a single motion, launched herself straight up,
back through the maintenance hatch in the top of the car.

There was a sharp, hissing sound followed by an audible, if soft, wrench. Several seconds after that there was a muffled metal on metal sound from somewhere
far away. The woman slid back down into the elevator car to admire her work.

Beyond her overall frame there was little to really tell about her, her clothing concealed essentially every aspect of her identity save for her biological sex
and general frame. She was slight, if the scale of the elevator car was accurate, though with broader shoulders than many. A lifetime of training and exercise
had done impressive things for her overall physique. All of this was bound up in a protective sneaking suit, though. Further information was restricted. She
clipped a line onto the side of the hole, bracing both ends of the clamp against the floor from top and bottom, and dropped through.

In another time and place, not so far removed from the base, a man and woman were talking. "So, bro, what's your plan?" Her build was appropriate
for being the woman in the suit. She was pale, though not ghastly so, with dark red hair and violet eyes. She wore her hair rather long, actually, flowing down
her back in a ponytail.

The man's voice was clipped, not wholly the tone someone would expect from a brother and sister talking with one another. It was a little too stern.
"The Duke's Specials have mobilized to this facility in Chicago," he noted. The owner of the voice wore his hair clipped short, and concealed his
eyes behind a pair of dark glasses that revealed only that there was a shallow scar along one eyebrow that exited on the cheek below it. He was another
redhead, though his hair was a blonder shade. "According to family records, this was one of Zero's private facilities."

"Like where he developed things like the Mirage during the War?"

"You could use the proper name but.. yes."

"Too many vowels."

The sigh the man allowed to escape called an abbreviated end to that debate. "Be that as it may. I'm going to distract the Specials. You're going
to go into the base and see what the Specials want in there so badly. There were many things that Zero had developed during the early days that we don't
want the Duke getting hold of."

"Yeah. Hate to see what he could do with the old bastard's toybox."

"You could be a little less crude too."

Female laughter carried matters back to the task at hand. Dangling at the end of the line from earlier, the woman in the suit swung back and forth, eventually
catching a maintenance ladder. The whole thing creaks in a slightly uncomfortable fashion, thanks to the age of the materials involved. After a couple of
moments of silence, however, the infiltrator makes her way down the ladder quickly.

At the bottom of the shaft she produced a collapsing baton from a pocket built into the thigh of the suit and inserts it into the lowest set of doors. Several
moments later the doors pry apart far enough for her to squeeze her way in and roll out onto the floor in a crouching position.

Her head tilts one way and then the other for a moment before, seemingly at random, she vaults towards the wall and runs along it for several paces, dropping
down to the ground several meters beyond where she initially started. As she lands, dust kicks up and reveals a network of tripwire lasers at around ankle
height behind her.

Moving forward from there she places her feet carefully on the ground, following a preset pattern in the checkered floor that begins inches from where she
landed, as if the contractors had run out of white tile and begun to put in black at some point to help stretch it further.

Another place and time, a bit further removed from the present, the actors similar to before. The girl is a little smaller. The man is, perhaps, a bit less
tense, though he still wears his hair high and tight. He has green eyes, as is revealed by the lack of his sunglasses and the absence of his scar.

They both have black eyes in the making, and look like they're responsible for one another's conditions, as they catch their breath. Mountains can be
seen in the near distance, on the horizon, but from where they are now it's mostly just open space. An old farmhouse can be seen in the distance as well.

"How long until flyover?" she asked.

The man responded without hesitation, "One hour."

"Pretty rough business, giving your little sister a black eye," the girl teased as she sprang back up to her feet. "I'm gonna have to make
up a good story tomorrow at school."

"You walked into a low hanging tree limb, perhaps?"

"Should probably stop doing that. I might look like a pirate one of these days if I don't."

"The road to mastery of the family methods is fraught with peril."

"I call ninja bullshit on that one. You're just falling back on stock quotes now."

"Not ninja..." the man replied, "Knight!"

---

- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Black Aeronaut]

It looks great. The action is engaging and the flashbacks aren't too jarring. The dialogue has a nicely witty edge to it as well, which is always a nice
plus.

As for seeming weak... Meh. It does come off so, but not in a really bad way. Just more like what you said - the scene simply petered out. Not all scenes need
to end in something grand or flashy. You're always going to have stuff like this. As long as you keep things engaging, it won't matter at all.

[ECSNorway]

It only seems weak because it's still building, and we don't have much of a sense of the world outside of a few little glimpses.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Berk]

Yeah, I would say that this is, perhaps, the first quarter or so of the first chapter at most. I've got this bad habit of just letting the story tell
itself without a huge plan as to exactly what happens when and where or how I'll say it until.. well.. when I say it.

I've got some more written there, but the transition between Flashback and Present felt a little clumsy and I might add another scene or two between them.

If I were to draw a parallel, it's kind of like one of those martial arts movies with the training montage at the start that helps explain out Our Hero got
into the mess that they've gotten themselves into.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[ECSNorway]

So long as you have a good sense of all of your major characters and what they're doing, their goals, and so forth, that can work well...
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Berk]

Oh, the characters are the very first thing to take shape.

We'll be meeting our second core character in.. oh.. a couple of updates I think. And be getting a name for our 'knight' as well around that point.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Berk]

I'm stuck at home because someone decided to use the road as a mud bog. So, you guys benefit from my misfortune today.

Another 1000 words.

As a note, all previous mentions of the 'Specials' have been replaced with 'The Irregulars' due to the fact that I was misremembering the title
I wanted to use for the group. (I had been remembering the full title, not the nickname.) I wonder if I'm a little too wordy here, telling more than I
should have other people say later. But I find myself crawling around in our heroine's head as she crawls around in the dark.

---

With a sudden burst of speed that belayed his size, the man reduced the distance between himself and his sister to essentially nothing and attempted to hands
upon her in order to send her back down to the ground. His expression was one of silent approval when his student wasn't where he initially aimed for and
he shifted his stance in preparation for the counterattack that he knew was coming.

Once again, in the present, the woman was standing before a door that had a rather interesting motto inscribed above it. Her Latin was virtually nonexistent,
her Tuscan was naturally even worse. She was fairly certain that she knew where the phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate." came from,
though. On the face of the door itself was the sign of the Order of Black Knights, the central spike through the middle split by the split in the door.

On the keypad next to the door, the woman inserted not one but two keys on opposing of the pad while keying in a code to the pad. One key appeared to be a
stylized, golden sword with a broken end from which projected an antiquated USB port. The other key seemed evocative of a wing, its own port concealed within
the 'feathers' of the wing.

The keypad let out a quiet chime after several moments, as the number sequence that the woman entered was quite extensive, and the symbol of the Black Knights
parted down the middle. There was a burst of old, stale air from within the room beyond, and an echo in the distance of the mechanism that opened the doors.
The doors began to close behind her as she pulled the two keys free from their interface slots, forcing her to hasten her passage into the darkness beyond.

As the doors closed behind her, a figure in stark contrast melted out of the gloom, wrapped entirely in gray and white with a cloak cast around it's
shoulders. A featureless mirror mask regarded the black door and gray seal in a void of passion for a moment before shrugging one shoulder, a hand coming up to
the keypad.

On the cloak the figure wore was a red variation of the Black Knights' symbol.

The woman in black stole across a catwalk overlooking what she presumed, when illuminated, was a hangar complex of some sort. There were probably concealed
exits to the surface somewhere in the infrastructure of Chicago itself. In her mind, she could hear her brother going over the details of the facility,
"According to our ancestor's notes, Empress Nunnally had never particularly liked the climate of Ares," the Britannian capital city on the East
Coast, once the Prime Minister's seat of power it had ascended to greater importance after the destruction of Pendragon, closer to the central empire's
physical center. "As both she and Zero aged, they moved to Chicago's Winter Palace so they could, in her words 'Watch the seasons change
properly.'"

"You make it sound like they were a couple. Didn't Zero kill her brother?"

"People are complicated," was her brother's reply to the question, "You honestly don't think that Emperor William was a virgin birth, do
you?"

Her voice in her memory stumbled, "Well.. I..."

"We don't have to have The Talk again, do we?" There was a bark of laughter after that.

The lack of proper lighting was a problem. Passive light amplification wasn't really enough to work in the pervasive gloom within the base. All the lights
were out thanks to primary power being down. There were no heat sources in the facility besides her own for the same reason. Active IR imaging might set off a
trap, for Zero was known to be paranoid for many very valid reasons.

She'd finally resorted to using a technology that hadn't been around in any applicable form in Zero's time to navigate. Echolocation wasn't the
thing of science fiction in his time, but the use of it in anything smaller than a Knightmare Frame had been the stuff of fantasy. The optics set into her mask
provided a crude outline of the world in monochrome black and green as she moved, the sound of her own footfalls providing the sound required to define the
world around her.

The hangar bay beyond the catwalk was completely empty.

Having no map to go on and no real idea of what exactly she was looking for, she decided to explore the facility in a methodical fashion. If the Shinkiro, or
anything else, wasn't in the hangar, logically it shouldn't be too far away. She found a stairway down after a little extra searching and made her way
to the floor of the hangar, eventually finding a door next to what she presumed to be a hatch into deeper parts of the facility for heavy equipment, and went
through.

There was a strange feeling, somewhere deep in her guts, something she really couldn't quite fathom. She'd felt it rarely in her life, on occasions
when she visited the family cemetery in the southeast. Her ancestors had, ostensibly, been land owning nobles with a certain fondness for citrus cultivation on
their land. There was the legendary Lord 'Orange' Gottwald, of course, who had stood out in the family for his military service and the lengths medical
science had gone to to keep him alive. He was also the last actual Gottwald to bear the Gottwald name, as all his kin had perished during the War of Two Kings
and he, himself, was unable to sire children due to how little of his original body remained.

FLEYJA-generated radiation had ensured a similar fate for his wife.

This was not to say that one of the most implacable men to serve the Britannian Crown since Bedwyr The One-Handed and his Japanese bride had not passed their
knowledge, and names, on before their passing.

Visiting his crypt on the anniversary of the Devil King's defeat, the year before, had a strange effect on her. It had been as if she could feel the
presence of the old soldier's cybernetic husk within the tomb. She had been able to tell that he was, in fact, buried much deeper than the sarcophagus
suggested.

---

- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Bluemage]

*claps psychotically*

Good, good! You suggest, but do not answer. You link, but do not connect. There is much freedom in the way you have written- freedom to take the who, what,
and why in new directions unguessed at now. The suspense of your audience guarantees you attention. Marvelous!

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Star Ranger4]

Hrrrrrm...... Machines love her and she luvs dem right back mebbie?
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Berk]

Bluemage wrote:

---

*claps psychotically*




Good, good! You suggest, but do not answer. You link, but do not connect. There is much freedom in the way you have written- freedom to take the who, what,
and why in new directions unguessed at now. The suspense of your audience guarantees you attention. Marvelous!

Part of the trick with writing CG is, of course, playing with the information given to both the reader AND the characters within the tale.

Star Ranger4 wrote:

---

Hrrrrrm...... Machines love her and she luvs dem right back mebbie?

There's a word in universe for people with high mechanical aptitude... we've met several, in fact, before.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

[Bluemage]

Devicers? Irregulars? Scientists?

Wow, that last post got away from me. I wasn't trying for that sort of madness, but I guess it works.

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Berk]

A double length update today because, as a certain Amber GM would say, Many Things Happen At Once.

I think I might stick to about this length for an update in the future.

---

The sensation that she was confronted with in the depths of that old lab somewhere under the streets of the city was similar in nature to the feelings that she
had felt while she was visiting her ancestor's tomb. She could feel something strange though the sensation that she felt was drawing her away from the
hangar and areas directly connected to it. Lacking anything better to go on, she turned a corner and continued deeper into the facility.

At the upper door, the figure in gray drew their hand away from the keypad and walked through the doors as they slid open a second time. The sound of the doors
opening was swallowed up beyond by space and sound proofed walls. The darkness did not seem to be much of an obstacle for them, perhaps they possessed
equipment similar to the person they were following. With unerring movements, they walked through the gloom, boots scarcely making any sound at all.

Up at street level, the Irregulars had set up shop in the parking lot of a nearby shopping arcade. Several large, black personnel carriers had parked in a
secondary lot and were set up with great interest in a building that was, supposedly, condemned. Naturally, the press and private citizens were all being kept
away from the area. It was, after all, a potentially dangerous situation whenever the Irregulars were called in to handle a situation. In the years since the
organization had formed, the point that the way the Irregulars were forced to do business was generally dangerous.

Urban warfare was always a nasty business, worse than the mechanized combat that had been the hallmark of the Knightmare era of warfare.

In the midst of this, a man dressed in the uniform of a minor functionary in the Britannian army made himself useful and generally unobtrusive as he kept tabs
on what was going on. He was a technical officer, according to his insignias, which excused the presence of a pair of utterly black data glasses affixed to his
face which were not a part of the standard uniform. As he navigated the communications chatter and quietly relayed information to forward units, he observed
that the Irregulars already had someone in what they were classifying as Restricted Area 4, with notation that there was support backing them up.

The man frowned fractionally at that and waited. At some point he suspected he was going to have to get involved with the matters at hand, but he wasn't
sure exactly when that was going to be. If the operative made their move, he was going to have to find a way to disrupt them. If he made himself too obvious he
was going to be up to his neck in commandos. Sometimes the greater part of valor is discretion on when to make use of said valor.

It wasn't the first time that he questioned his decision to let his younger sister infiltrate the facility itself, but he quickly countered that line of
thought with the realization that she would have never been able to blend in with the army regulars. He had been military once, and there was a certain way of
moving and holding yourself that someone from the outside never quite got right.

His unmarred eyebrow popped up fractionally behind his glasses when one of the Irregulars who was waiting in the wings suddenly went into a seemingly silent
fit and dropped to their knees, clawing at the collar of their uniform as if suddenly feeling trapped within the suit. Their fellows grabbed them and hauled
them off the line, looking rather shaky themselves.

In the depths of his glasses, the projection layer reported on information he'd gleaned from compromised frequencies. There was something down there that
had severely rattled someone on the team. After a moment more, an implant in his inner ear reported the Irregular's voice, a woman, screaming something
about 'The darkness closing in all around her.' It wasn't the person in there, though, they were still moving in.

The rumors of the Irregulars having an advanced information sharing system seemed to be pretty much on the money. Who the hell put a claustrophobic person on a
team with a uniform that had full body concealment, though? They'd have to be on anti-anxiety medication just to put the damn helmet on. And how hard up
did someone have to be to freak out over an information projection in the face bowl? Maybe the reason they were so still was a full interior projection of what
their fellow was seeing?

He made a note to himself to try to steal one of those suits before this was finished, or at very least the helmet. They had to take them off at some point.

He was going to have to generate a distraction soon, though, otherwise things were going to go straight to hell very quickly, and the girl he'd sent into
harm's way was someone that he could not afford to get captured. His ancestors would rise from their tombs to punish him, were he to actually allow
something like that to happen.

With his subversion of the communication's board, though, he could slip just enough chaos into the system to give her a fighting chance. All he had to do
was wait for the right moment. The delicate nature of the situation meant that he would have to continue to wait and see what happened next. The need for
patience in his situation made him feel somewhat better as well for patience was another one of his specialties.

An eerie, red glow filled the lab that the infiltrator in black had discovered, it had been dim at first, but increased in intensity as she had explored the
lab further. Within a few minutes, the glow had become sufficient to illuminate the lab enough to see by, according to the sensor in her helmet. The air
quality was good, if a little cold, but she didn't mind the chill. The mask over her face came apart in two parts, the lower part with atmospheric filter
dropping down to her neck, the upper part with the imaging system going up to her forehead. Without echolocation, the lab looked a bit less mundane, except for
the red glow coming though a heavy glass window on one side.

What she saw astonished her.

She'd seen pictures in school of something like what she was seeing with her own, two eyes. The red glow was provided by emergency lighting of an actual
Sakuradite reactor, not a large one, but sufficient to power the equipment in the area. Some sort of backup generator, she presumed, that had been activated
when she entered the lab.

The strange sensation she was feeling seemed to be coming from the reactor itself.

She saw something else in the window and briefly thought she understood what it was that she was seeing when reality lurched violently. She tried to hang on to
the console she had been standing next to but it writhed in her hands like a living thing for a moment. She dimly felt her head strike something hard and cold
before she knew nothing else for several seconds.

In the window a pair of eyes burned through the gloom, illuminated by a bird-like sigil.

Up on the surface, the man with dark glasses frowned as a report came in of the Irregular in the facility having 'found the target' and begun the
process of subduing her. He couldn't afford to delay any longer. He fed a virus into the comm system that started the process of swiftly bringing it to its
knees while transmitting back information consistent with Sakuradite related interference. Even if there was none down there, by the time anyone found out what
was going on they'd both, hopefully, be long gone.

In the next van over he heard his 'superior' begin to loudly exclaim something about environmental contamination. Thusly having distracted the enemy
for a moment, he waited until no one was looking at him or had him in their peripheral vision, and took an opportunity to slip out.

In the moments that followed, several things happened at once.

A figure in a gray Irregular uniform dropped down from the top of the van the man in dark glasses had been working in and attempted to land a falling kick on
him that actually cratered the pavement when the blow missed his shoulder by scant inches. The man managed to roll away from the strike with blinding speed and
dropped several capsules on the ground that discharged a thick cloud of chemical smoke in the immediate area.

Down in the lab, what looked like a cabinet lit up as the girl in black's hand brushed across several switches and buttons at random on the console she had
been leaning on in a desperate bid to keep herself from falling over. The Irregular's visor snapped closed again as they whipped their head around towards
the movement and sound heard from that direction.

Several hoses set into the side of the cabinet discharged a cold, misty gas that rose towards the ceiling quickly, dissolving in the air. The air itself took
on a rank, slightly moldy scent like something very old had been introduced to the room. The smell dissipated quickly, but it was enough to slip into the
helmet of the Irregular and make them wheeze. After another moment the cabinet's door cracked open on one side and the face of it unfolded under its own
power.

In a different universe, a small girl ran.

It was a hot, oppressive afternoon somewhere on an overpass in a huge metropolitan center. There was no traffic, for which the child would have been thankful
had she the thought in her mind to be thankful for having no traffic to worry about. The sun beat down. The reclaimed swampland which the city had been built
on still provided for an oppressive humidity that made the air seem as soup.

Something was coming. Something terrible was coming. She knew it.

It sounded like a train and a hurricane all at once, and the roaring sound of it only grew louder in her ears as the eternal seconds of her run ticked by. She
didn't know what it was, she didn't want to know what it was. Whatever she did, she could not look back at it. To look back at it would mean it would
get her, and that would be the end of everything.

Flames exploded up either side of the overpass as the world turned black and red for a moment, causing the child to trip over her feet and fall to the
pavement. The pain of colliding with the tarmac was not nearly as painful as the horrible thudding in her chest as the thing which was chasing her drew closer.
She could feel its breath. She could feel the horrible, hammering sound in the air even as the sound drowned out her ability to hear. The deep bass of the
noise thudded deep in her chest, strangling her heart.

And then it all stopped and the world went abruptly and blissfully black.

Outside of the infiltrator's mind, back in the lab, the sound dampeners in the Irregular's helmet did nothing to mask a sudden, feminine scream as the
soldier reached up towards her head as if trying to cover it from someone raining blows down on it from above. Her whole body reeled as if struck several times
over, finally turning once entirely and falling forward in a rather undignified heap. As she lay there she curled up as if the fall of her cloak could shield
her from whatever she had just experienced.

On the surface, the man in dark glasses was in a struggle for his life. His opponent was not faster than him but, impossibly, they were much stronger than him.
Physical blows that missed his body tore at the air. Their footfalls left prints in the asphalt. It was like fighting something that weighed as much as ten men
but moved with the grace and speed of only one.

When, from nowhere, his attacker suddenly recoiled, gripping at their chest as if someone had stabbed them, he made his escape rather than press his luck in
trying to defeat them. It was only a handful of long strides to a manhole, which he made his escape through by detonating a small charge he'd concealed
within it, knocking the lid clean off and into the engine block of a nearby military vehicle. He would have time to worry about when he had been found out
later, he needed to find a way to get to his sister before it was too late for her.

---

- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead