(( I guess so, but after I do this you might need to edit your last post before that one. :p

I'm gonna edit in my next "post" right here when I get done, I'm halfway through already. Stay tuned to this channel. ))]

***

(( And here it is. ))

"Sounds like the LAPD's coming in to investigate. We'd better get out of here."

His words almost sound distant as she listens, and so do his footsteps as he turns on his heels and heads for the car. She stands staring for a while longer though, into the space where the man once was, her eyes growing watery. "Yeah..." she finally whispers.

She turns to head for the car, her voice shaky as she rubs the back of her arm across her eyes, trying to dry them off. "Let's go..."

Her door opens and one foot steps in, but she pauses and thinks just as Wolf begins to start it. "Wait."

"What?"

Facing back at the bodies with her foot still in, she says, "We have to take them."

She doesn't pause to consider his reaction, or even listen to him, instead jogging straight over to the woman and stooping down. As she begins to scoop her up into her arms, she looks up to Wolf and says, "Help me!"

She then lifts and carries her over to the car, eyes focused on nothing but the woman's face and the backseat, where she places her body across the seat, not giving a thought to the blood. Then, she goes back over to the other two bodies and makes to pick up one of them and carry him back, to place him in the car, too.

OOC: Ok, move this around...rearranging...got it.

BIC: Wolf didn't give too much thought of the idea of blood on the carseat...although he wondered why they couldn't have just put the bodies in the trunk.

It's not a freakin VW Beetle...it HAS a trunk he thought. However, he diecided damaging the upholstrey was immaterial at this point. He walked over to the last assassin's body, picked him up, and added him to the small pile in the back of the car.

You died fighting to support a lie...but you will not be denied a proper burial for that mistake. he thought as he closed the door.

***

The drive back to base was unnervingly quiet. Wolf felt he had to say something...he just didn't know what. Finally he thought of something to say.

"It must not have been easy...to fight your own students like that, especially knowing what you know now about Mastermind." he said. "It's one thing to see your own comrades or former comrades die...it's quite another to see them die by your own hand. Such a thing has only happened to me once, about 3 years ago...and I often wondered if there was another way. Anyway, I really hope we can find a way to end this war quickly...so maybe this endless cycle of deception and death can end."

Memo to self: Stop talking... he thought after his mind finally caught up with his words. He didn't read his own memo and kept talking. However he thought it was best if he changed subjects.

"I noticed there was a connection between you and the black assassin. Personally, it's not my place to know what has occured between you two, and it's not my place to judge that either. After all, it was a different time. If you want to let me in on it, then fine. If not, that's fine too. I'm not going to make assumptions about anything, because I know which side you're on anyway, and I'm glad its the same side as us."

The Trans-Am pulled into the underground parking garage at the Base.

"Yeah..." she whispers, head looking sideways out of the car.

It barely registers when they park, and she absent-mindedly lifts her head off her hand and opens the door, getting out to take the bodies inside. Not much time had passed since they'd left the tower, but she could tell their nanites were soon to turn on again. Reaching over into the backseat, she places her hand up against the woman's face, brushing back some blonde hair from her face first. Her eyes meet the woman's, and she gazes into them for a few seconds before closing her own eyes and taking a breath. Connecting with her nanites to hers, she concentrates for a moment and steadies her breathing, beginning to interface with them and send the shutdown codes to the nanites' processors.

From Wolf's point of view, it must look like she's trying to give her a silent eulogy or something.

Wolf walked away from the solemn farewell Scrya was giving to her dead students.

Let her grieve, she needs to be alone, he told himself. As he headed out of the garage, Lieutenant Commander Sharpe of Team Beta approached him.

"Is everything all right, sir?" Sharpe asked.

"Uh...yeah I'm fine," Wolf said skeptically before he noticed there was blood on his trenchcoat. "This blood isn't mine. We ran into a couple of assassins during the mission."

"I see...I'm assuming you got them all, sir."

"Not quite. 3 of the 4 that attacked us are dead. The other one escaped. There's another thing. We took the bodies with us. Apparently Scrya didn't want the LAPD to manhandle them...that, and they happened to be former students of hers. She's going to need help taking the bodies to the morgue. I'm pretty sure she wants to give them a proper burial, and I'm going to oblige her on that. Those assassins died for a false cause...they shouldn't have to suffer in the hereafter for that."

Sharpe nodded "All right, I'll get some men on it."

Wolf grinned a bit. "Good. And one more thing, tell the corpsman not to do an autopsy."

"Will do, sir."

"Ma'am?"

Scrya looks up from her work with a start; she hasn't been paying attention to anything else. "Huh?"

"We can have somebody take the bodies to the morgue, if you're done...?"

She looks away from Sharpe, and back to the bodies, her hand still touching the face of one of the men. So many memories she had with him -- with all of them -- are now gone. With a sigh she removes her hand from him and steps back, never once taking her eyes off his as she feels his augmentations shutting off completely. "In a minute..."

Sharpe glances between her and the bodies for a moment, then starts walking backwards. "All right..."

Once she feels he's out of easy earshot, she puts her hands together and holds them up to her face, bowing her head and shutting her eyes for a silent prayer, of sorts.

Our spirits trained together, and grew as one... together in life, and together in death... goodbye, my brothers, and sister.

She slowly releases her hands after being silent for a while longer, and takes one last look at them before heading back over towards Sharpe. As she passes him though, she stops to put her hand on his shoulder. In a soft voice she tells him, eyes looking past him at the floor, "I'm going to give you a list when you're done with them... pass it on to Knight... he'll know what to do with it."

"Yes, ma'am..."

With that done, she heads off into the base, silent and placid.

OOC: While I wait for the raven to answer Kaitlin's earlier question...I must keep the RP moving...sorta.

BIC: Wolf went to his quarters and inserted the memory key he got from Toshiro into his laptop. opening up the main file he was immediately presented with a list of contents that were all in Japanese Kanji. Although he could read some of it, and new it was the operations reports of Hanzou's JSDF Cyber Counterterror Task Force (CCTF), it had been almost 2 years since he had tried to read Japanese untranslated. So he hit a key, and all the text translated into English.

Now my good friend, let's see what it was that got you killed, he thought as he began to scroll through all the operations listings. Finally he came to the last entry, dated March 19, 2024. He opened the file, and was presented with an after action report from Hideki Hanzou.

"While out on patrol, one of our PT boats spotted an odd set of structures on Torishima Island. Since the boat picked up a lot of interference, we assumed it might be something of cyber nature, so we investigated the island that night. What we found there defies explination. It was a base. A massive, newly built base. There were numerous defenses and hangars, as well as at least 4 large satellite dishes, but here's where it gets really strange. The base was empty, completely devoid of all life. Nominal power was on, and it seemed to be doing something, but we have no clue what. My original thought was that it was a JRA base, but there's no way they could have built something like this without us knowing. Maybe the intel boys are doing something with this...a little bit of national security business or something. Then again, maybe it's another one of Mastermind's failed experiments. Either way I can't blow it up yet; I'll have to remember to ask Toshiro about this place."

Included with the report were maps and photos. Wolf looked at them, and grinned/frowned at the same time.

This could definetely be the place...but what if it's not? I guess I'll have to wait for Kaitlin and Monk to come back in order to confirm this.

OOC: For the record, there is a Torishima Island in Japan. It's quite remote too.

(( BUM BUM BUMMMM ))

Scrya makes her way silently down the many hallways, turning the many corners and riding the elevator up to her room. Thankfully, nobody's around to see her, or if they are, they don't pay her any mind. She's very thankful for that, yes.

Except when she finally gets to her room and lies on her bed, nothing seems to be able to help. It seems like hours pass as she just lies there, but in fact only a few minutes do, as she runs through just a few things in her mind.

Finally, she decides to do something else.

Getting up with a start, she makes her way back across the base, towards the medical wing.

"Just tell me where we are going."

Raven's right eye glowed yellow and series of skematics, blue prints, temperature, contour, and normal maps apeared next to satelite photos.

"Torishima Island, Japan"

Kaitlin downloaded all the location data on Torishima and Mastermind's facility there into her PDAP.

"Thanks," she said to the raven "You probably should get going and find some way to trap Mastermind within the Torishima base. Whatever you do though, be discreet. Mastermind may not know you exist, but I doubt he'll appreciate a random AI moving about his facilities."

Kaitiln thought for a second, pondering over what she could do with this AI. "All right then, where do you want to go today?"

A doctor briefly popped into Angel's room, stuck him with a needle, then left.

Angel's remaining eye twitched furiously.

"The one annoying part about medical nanites is that you can feel them moving."

"Jus' one reason why I don't let 'em use 'em on me..." Wraith remarks.

***

Surprised when she doesn't find Wraith in his room, Scrya then starts looking for him in the hallways, checking with several doctors and nurses and searching a few rooms. Finally, she heads for Angel's room to ask if he's seen Wraith anywhere.

And she ends up finding him.

"Angel...?" she asks, knocking softly on the door before going in. "Have you seen--? Oh, Wraith..."

She enters carefully and shuts the door behind her, being quiet for their sake. Wraith takes one look at her and knows she doesn't feel good. "You don' look so hot... you okay?"

"Uh..." She glances between Angel and Wraith, keeping her hands on the doorknob behind her. Swaying gently in place, she flashes a smile and looks down, laughing softly and saying, "I'll be fine..."

Looking back up and walking over slowly, she then asks them, "What about you two? You gonna be all right?"

(A day or so earlier...)

There was very little noise as he put the hapless agent into a sleeper hold. The knife in Devin's left hand reversed itself, its serrated edge resting against his victim't throat. Oh sure, it might not kill him... but it would be very, very unwise to try and struggle free, nonetheless. His victim's hand reached into his coat for a weapon, so Devin decided to help the poor man by drawing it for him.

It was a nasty little piece of work. Czech Skorpion, rechambered to fire 9mm pistol. The weight suggested Hydra-Shok hollowpoints - minute spectral analysis via his nostrils and augmented brain confirmed it.

Just like old times. No, not like old times...

The forest rustled. Half a dozen trenchcoated men emerged from the bush and surrounded him. All were armed with mirrorshades and ugly black Skorpion machine pistols like the one his victim had had. In thedim moonlight, filtered through the trees, Devin almost didn't need to hear them clicking their safeties off.

Old times would never have had you surrounded by six armed and very hostile men.

"Back off!" Devin shouted. "Or I swear to the God I don't believe in, he's going to die!"

Lightning flashed, and thunder rolled... rolled a natural twenty, it would seem, judging by the cacophony that followed which set everyone flinching. Devin silently reminded himself not to blaspheme any more as he flicked his "commandeered" Skorpion's safety off and sent three rounds downrange, striking the center mass of the agents' leader. He grinned as the rounds replaced the red laser dot of the weapon's laser aiming module with bloody blossoms of their own, then realized that if he had one of those, it would also be highly likely that his opponents had them as well.

Devin ducked behind his victim just as a fusillade of rounds thudded into the man's chest, using the ambulatory corpse as a makeshift tower shield as he rushed the nearest agent, and he was gratified to hear an "oof" as he bowled over his new victim. He rolled aside just as his partner came in with a vicious steel-toed kick that missed taking Devin's ear off by half an inch, and the nano-augmented man stunned the agent with a kidney punch to the rear.

The other four agents had spread out in pairs, seeking cover. But Devin had cover of his own, and the thing was, he was a better shot than they were.

There were three staccato blasts, then a bout of vicious cursing as the Skorpion Devin was carrying suffered a chamber explosion.

"Fucking worthless conversions!"

Devin's right hand was currently useless. He let his human shield take a few more hits, then he activated his augs, and he was in one man's face almost before the latter knew it. You couldn't blame him, though. Lack of practice.

Devin's snake-swift stab to the neck was practiced, though, practiced so much that he was already killing the second man before the corpse of the first hit the ground. A pair of laser aiming dots glided over his arm.

But Devin was no longer there. You had to give the agents credit, though. They were smooth and controlled - scanning the surroundings, actually seeing what was there instead of what they wanted to see. In fact, they were so good that one of them almost reacted in time to Devin dropping from a nearby branch on top of one of them.

The one below the ex-SEAL crumpled like a piece of crushed paper, and Devin yanked hard on the other's weapon hand, hyperextending the elbow and shoulder joints, then he seized and twisted the wrist hard and around, breaking it with a crunch, before squeezing the trigger and killing the man with his own gun. Then, not being one to waste ammunition, he offed the last survivor with the same pistol.

He looked around at the seven corpses. Not bad. But in the old days, this would never have happened. For one, he'd have killed them all before they were even aware of him.

One of the "corpses" groaned. Devin answered with a double-tap of Hydra-Shok. The agent died without further noise.

And he'd have made sure that they were ALL dead...

He tucked a Skorpion into his belt. This was big news. He had to get it back to the guys, and quickly.

******

(Present day...)

Behind Scrya and Wraith, the doorknob turned slowly. Devin let himself in with a grace that would have made your average ninja sound like a brass band.

What he had found was important, but it could wait for his comrades.

"Okay, Devin? That right there was some seriously spooky shit."

Angel leaned back in his bed then said, "Well, to answer your question Scrya, Wraith here'll be up and running within the week. I've stuck here until I can walk, my psych evaluation is done, and my massive internal injuries have healed. And by the way: Devin, I love you man. I owe you. Big time."

OOC: Now expressing temp GM powers to move things along...

As the raven vanished into thin air, Kaitiln took a quick look around. "Let's go," she said to Monk, "We've probably been here too long"

***

Back in Mastermind's fortress, an alarm went off. "What now?" Mastermind asked nobody in particular. One of his hacker/technician programs, named OPTIK-NERVE, answered

"Sir, we've detected intruders in the Cyber-Maui facility. Apparently they hacked into our communications grid. Analysis of the spike used to hack in is consistent of Cyber Force design."

"Do they have the location of our main base?"

"Unknown. They did not manage to trace the messages back here...but there was that business in Los Angeles..."

"Whatever happened in Los Angeles is irrelevant, OPTIK-NERVE," Mastermind said. "How many intruders in the Cyber Maui comms facility?"

"Two sir. There was a dampening field earlier that prevented confimration, but there are two Cyber Force units currently inside the facility...and attempting to leave it."

"Send a team of Assassins to take them down!"

"Affirmative, sir."

***

Heading down the hallway to the gap in the wall that they had entered in, Kaitiln said. "Looks like we're in the clear"

6 First Order assassins appeard around Monk and Kaitiln, various pistols and submachine guns drawn.

"That's what you think," one of them said.

OOC: Once I drag MC back here, the fight shalt be written!

(( I'd say, "Good GOLLY Jesus, 6 in the Cyber World??!" but then I realize they might have the Uber Powers I imagine for CW FO folk (i.e., nothing special between there and RW), so then I say, "Oh... :)" ))

Scrya looks over to Devin as Angel finishes speaking, and cuts in before he can answer Angel. "Your mission go good?"

"It went okay. That's the good news. Here's the bad news..."

He moved closer to them, before retrieving a sheaf of papers from his coat.

"I don't know what they told you guys, but apparently Javelin, the entire weapons system, is not just a single satellite. For one thing, it would be too easy to track and shoot down - antisatellite missiles are particularly good at tracking down objects in geosynchronous orbit, which is what Javelin would have to be able to do if it were to provide effective coverage for the United States. Therefore, it uses refracted emissions and sealed beam..."

He paused.

"Am I using technical language without knowing it again? I apologize. I read too much stuff that's not relevant for a bio major."

"Okay, once more from the top. Javelin's a giant pulse laser cannon, embedded in mountains somewhere even these documents don't say. On command, it fires a beam that is received by "splitter" satellites, codenamed Medusa, which serve to amplify, split and retarget the secondary beams onto incoming threats. It's kind of like a substation in the power grid."

"Once Javelin is activated, subsidiary satellites, codenamed Perseus, will deploy from their disguises as commercial satellites into giant mirrors, which gives the system nearly global coverage. And while the small beams aren't too worrying, the Medusa splitters are very troubling. There's nearly two dozen of them floating in the sky, and each of them can channel the full power of the original Javelin."

"How bad is that?" Angel asked.

"How bad? Let's just say that the beams from the Perseus satellites are judged as being able to pierce nuclear silos and superheat the interior until the missile fuel explodes. And that is a split beam - barely a hundredth of the power of the original. The original... Well, apparently they slaved four fusion reactors to it, and during every firing sequence, they still had to pull power from external sources to keep it up. Within seconds it can eradicate a city from the face of the earth like the vengeful gaze of God Himself."

"Whoa."

"That's not the half of it. Javelin literally cuts the sky open every time it fires. There was a little-known Soviet ABM system called the Sarishagan Tiger - it bombarded the ionosphere with ionizing radiation, until they punched a hole in it. The idea was that you could induce an electrical current in missile fuel tanks and induce them to explode in orbit. However, they terminated that project after it was discovered that the Tiger devastated the ozone layer and let all kinds of cosmic radiation through in the wake of its activations."

Devin stopped and took a drink from his hip flask, flipping through his notes as he did so.

"So they discontinued research, but the Javelin team resurrected it. Javelin's laser is tightly bound in a magnetic field to keep it from degrading in the atmosphere. The ionosphere interferes with this sealing, so they' used a massive radio telescope - capable of the outputs of the Sarishagan Tiger - built around the heart of Javelin, in order to rip a hole through the ionosphere each time they fired. However, the Perseus satellites also contain miniature Tigers to "open" a path to their land-bound targets. Why is this bad? Well, the increased radiation, heat and light let through will completely change the face of the local climate. UV rays will cause skin cancer and kill crops and prevent rains. There's probably a whole slew of other ecological effects this is going to have, which I have no inclination to think about."

"The cure is worse than the disease, it would seem."

"Well, when you're threatened with all your cities becoming massive pyres of thermonuclear radiation, a little skin cancer and localized droughts, don't sound like big sacrifices to make, especially when said disasters occur in the countries of the people who are bent on turning you and yours into piles of glowing ash."

"But still-"

"Look, I'm not going to speculate WHAT they were thinking when they developed Javelin, all right? All I know is that this situation is Very Fucking Bad Shit, and when I use that kind of SEAL technical language with reference to local conditions, ladies and gentlemen, you know that it is indeed exactly what I say it is."

"All right, control systems..."

"The system is very advanced, and they've got it all together and working on automatic, because let's be honest, no human, not even an augmented one, can react effectively to the threats presented to them by a mass nuclear launch. So they slaved it to an AI. I think it was called Panopticon. Panopticon takes orders in one fashion only - via a series of access codes that serve to encrypt/decrypt its commands."

"And these are the codes J2 and Beowulf were carrying in their heads."

"I got it, Devin. About us."

"What are we, Angel?"

"Royally screwed."

"That's why we're going to stop Mastermind instead of trying to turn this thing off," Scrya says bluntly. "Speaking of which... Wolf might have some information that we can use, that he got from one of our contacts... I don't know though, he's the only one who's looked at it so far."

(( This being post 99, maybe this's a good place to stop and wait for BG to get back from her holidays...? ))

Several ravens were picking through garbage in a nearby park. Raven flew over to them. They regarded the newcomer suspiciously.

"don't mind me boys, I'm hiding out here." He picked over the garbage too. soon the other ravens went back to their scavenging.

OOC: (kicks the living hell out of my computer) Teach you not to have enough system resources to boot! (looks around and clears throat) umm...I'm getting the new chapter up right now.

EDIT: It's up. http://www.nuklearforums.com/showthread.php?t=8021