Rise in Revolution (Chapter Fourteen)
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Chapter Fourteen
Spirit of the Phoenix
IAL prison, Sector IAL. January 18, 2272. Time instance 842N.
A crowd of people, primarily members of the Black Market but with several other IAL citizens, raced through the streets towards the prison, armed with whatever they could get their hands on. Clash flew over them all, flaming wings beating a pattern in his ears to match the shouts and chants of the crowd below.
We’re coming for you, Scooter.
He flew lower as they approached the intimidating building, made of dark brick and lacking windows. Tanadin held out her arm helpfully and he landed on it, talons wrapping easily around her flaming forearm and wings folding against his back. He tilted his head curiously as he heard one of his friends speak.
“Why are we moving so quickly? Why can’t we wait and plan this out?” Jimmy asked Seven as the crowd stopped in front of the gates of the prison. “Didn’t you say we have two days?”
“I was being very generous with my estimate. We have anywhere between two hours and two days, and it’s probably the former.”
“...Oh.” Jimmy stepped back.
“What’s the plan?” Mars asked quietly.
“Storm the prison.” With that, Seven stepped forward and crossed through the wall into the area of the prison. Immediately turrets clicked and activated, their barrels lifting and beginning to spin. He leaped back to avoid the bullets, watching carefully as a cyborg stepped out of the front doors of the prison.
“Halt. Lay down your weapons and come quietly.”
Cap growled quietly. “2409.”
Seven backed up into the crowd as Shawn took aim with the shotgun. Mysteriously, the metal of the barrel had thin, melting patterns of ice across its surface, but he took no notice as he pulled the trigger.
Kartzal chunks flew out. 2409 took no notice other than registering a hostile action, readying his gun. As a two thousand unit, he was similar to Seven, but considerably weaker and without as much human thought and reasoning.
Shawn quickly scrambled to duck behind a wall as the turrets aimed and started to fire as well, the rest of the group following suit.
“What the hell?” Mars demanded, looking over at Seven. “Why didn’t that do anything? The kartzal stunned both you and those three thousand units earlier.”
“They must have patched the systems.” Seven muttered, the iris-equivalent in his left eye spinning and clicking as he thought.
“So, what’s the plan?” Gali asked, voice quiet. “We can’t just-”
“Storm the prison.”
“Don’t you think we should step back and plan a bit? We can’t just cha-”
Hawk was interrupted by Seven as he shook his head. “No. Screw this. Stay here.” He shot out from behind the wall and charged the cyborg, dodging the bullets shot at him. He raised his arm and fired a few shots into two of the turrets, damaging them enough to disable them, before getting into a melee fight with the two thousand unit.
Clash took off again, hovering where he could watch the fight better without being in any danger himself. He watched as Seven easily dodged every one of 2409’s attacks, the whole while dodging most of the bullets of the turrets, the enemy cyborg doing the same. Surprisingly, he feinted a strike at 2409’s side and moved to strike at his neck instead, cutting easily through the human right side of the cyborg and letting him drop to the ground, dead.
Apparently Seven’s threat detection and prediction software was better.
He shot at a third turret and ignored a couple of bullets that grazed his metal side. He couldn’t avoid them all, but he could minimize damage. One of the turrets crumbled as spikes of darkness pierced its outer protective layer and into the wiring within, causing it to spark and twitch. The final turret, the one that Seven had been firing at, went down after another couple of bullets.
M lowered his cloaked arms and tilted his head slightly, looking over Seven.
“Watch yourself,” he said simply, before walking into the prison, Seven and the others not far behind.
“Split up! At least one combat-competent member in each group. Get the prisoners and meet back here as soon as you can! Go!” Seven raced off down a hallway, Jimmy not far behind. Zahnra set off in a different direction, and without any further prompting, Clash flew down a hallway with Emma following, kitchen knife in hand.
“I hope you don’t mind that I’m following you, but I don’t really think I qualify as capable of combat! Not against cyborgs and automated turrets, anyway!”
Clash cawed back at her, silently wishing he could communicate with non-elementals in this form, as he winged his way down the hallway and up a staircase. Considering his wingspan, it was a tight fit, but he managed. He cawed again, louder this time and straining his ears for a response.
“Clash?” It was faint and up another floor, but it was there: Scott’s voice.
Clash cawed again and rounded a corner, coming face-to-face with an interior turret. He screeched and blasted fire directly into the gaps in its moving parts, frying the wiring inside, before moving on. Emma watched in awe before quickly racing after him, barely managing to keep up with the phoenix.
Them or us. Them or us.
Clash dispatched another three turrets on his way up to the third floor. He screeched in defiance at the final turret that managed to shoot him in the wing. The bullet passed straight through and didn't cause too much damage, but it hurt and most of all it frightened him.
“Clash?!”
“Scott!” Emma darted down the hallway, Clash not far behind.
“Clash! Emma!” Scott got to his feet and stood at the bars of his cell, grinning widely. Clash transformed back into his human form and reached through the bars to grab one of Scott’s hands. “I was wondering where you guys were! Of course, you didn’t forget me or anything. I’m unforgettable.”
“No, never. Never.” Clash assured.
Emma rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s get you out of-”
Clash shouted in pain as another bullet struck him, this time in his right shoulder. He whirled around to see another two thousand unit standing at the end of the hallway, red mechanical eye glowing.
“You get Scooter out of there! I’ll distract the cyborg!” Clash transformed back into his phoenix form and charged the cyborg, screeching and beating at her with his wings, more of a tactic of getting her attention than anything. She slashed at him with her blade but he was too fast to hit consistently, although he did take a few bad hits.
Please hurry. Clash glanced behind him to see Emma still struggling with the lock, Scott shouting encouragement to both of them.
The phoenix dodged another blow from the cyborg and hesitated as she stumbled, miscalculating exactly where he was due to the flickering flames. I could kill her. I could burn her skin and fry her circuits and kill her.
If he had been human at the moment, he would have felt sick at the thought.
I won’t. I can’t. I can’t just kill someone like that. I can’t-
His train of thought was interrupted as he avoided another slash of the blade, but what he hadn’t been expecting was for the bullet to fire out of the gun in her hand.
What are we without mercy? Only puppets of death.
As the bullet drove through his chest, a scream wrenched itself from the phoenix, loud enough for everyone in the building to hear it as he erupted into a pillar of flames and dissolved into ashes.
Scott...
~~~
The cyborg stumbled back, sensors overloaded with the amount of flames in front of her. Before they had really started to fade, however, her human eye picked up on a shape about half a second before the knife was driven through her eye and into her brain, killing her instantly.
Emma snarled and yanked the knife out of the cyborg’s eye socket as the final flames faded. She was a bit singed around the edges but fine. She shivered, trying to ignore the pain that Clash’s sudden death had caused as she retrieved the keys from the cyborg’s corpse. She tried to ignore Scott’s angry and pained screams, even as she unlocked his cell and he ran forward to kick angrily at the dead cyborg.
It wasn’t until Tanadin and a person she had never seen before rounded the corner that she finally allowed herself to react, tears welling in her eyes and pointing at the pile of smoldering ashes when Tanadin demanded to know where Clash was.
“Oh. Oh. Scott, no, Scott, shh.” She grabbed Scott’s arm, making her flames safe once more, and tugged him over to the ash pile. “Look.”
She let go of his arm and knelt down, running her fingers through the ashes until she found what she was looking for. She gently scooped it up in both hands and stood, only uncupping them when both Scott and Emma leaned over to look.
A young phoenix, barely small enough to fit in Tanadin’s hands, raised its head and shuffled its wings, looking directly at Scott and letting out a quiet peep.
~~~
“So what, exactly, have we gained?” Seven practically demanded, looking over at Tanadin. They were standing outside the prison once more, having rescued as many prisoners as they could find.
“Minus one Clash, plus five regular citizens.” She mumbled. “There was nothing of use in here. We didn’t even get Scott- I sent him back to the Black Market with Clash. Neither of them can fight like this. This was a total loss.”
“I beg to differ.” Geek stepped forward, holding some kind of odd device in her hand. “I believe this is used to remove anti-magic collars, yes?”
“Yes.” Seven took it from her, looking it over. It appeared to require a cyborg to work it, to send energy into the device and calibrate it properly to take off specific types of collars.
“Could it be used to remove this?” She tugged gently at the metal ring around her neck.
Seven shook his head immediately. “No. They wouldn’t keep one with a high enough security clearance to remove yours in the IAL prison.” Just to make sure, he pressed the device against her collar and activated it.
The light on its side blinked red, and nothing else seemed to happen.
Tanadin patted Geek’s shoulder reassuringly. “We’ll find something to get that off, don’t worry.”
Sadie sidestepped over and tapped Seven’s shoulder. “Mine’s not as powerful as Geek’s. Do you think it could be removed?”
Seven shrugged and tried it.
The light flashed green and with a quiet metallic click, the lock on Sadie’s collar released and it fell free to the ground below.
Sadie roared, spreading her wings and claws to their fullest and blasting purple-black flames to the skies. “I haven’t felt this good in decades! I feel as if I could take down an archdemon!”
Geek shuffled uncomfortably when Sadie said this, but the younger demon didn’t notice, taking off to fly a circuit around the prison, roaring and blasting flames in victory.
Tanadin grinned and looked over at Seven.
“Plus one Sadie.”
“That should help.” He handed the device back to Geek. “Let’s get going. We have a control center to take down.”
Tanadin grinned and turned to highfive Emma beside her, who was still recovering from seeing Clash die- no matter how temporarily- and from actually killing someone for the first time.
It was necessary. It was her or us.
So why do I feel so awful?
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Date: 2016-04-20 12:09 am (UTC)But now Clash is a baby? O_o
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Date: 2016-04-20 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-20 02:11 pm (UTC)To this: http://www.gameteep.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Monster-Story-Phoenix-Monster-Baby1.png
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Date: 2016-04-20 05:51 am (UTC)-the lurkiest lurker
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Date: 2016-04-20 11:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-20 11:44 am (UTC)Yeah.
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Date: 2016-04-21 04:53 pm (UTC)I hope Seven with Sadie's power is able to take on the 9000 unit of IAL
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Date: 2016-04-20 11:00 am (UTC)M has arms confirmed. So, I'm NOT an enchanted cloak.
Yay prison! Sadie has been unleashed. Not sure how I feel about this. But Scotts free, so that's good. But the question we should be asking is: Was
CHESTER allowed to go free?
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Date: 2016-04-20 11:45 am (UTC)Yes he was.
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Date: 2016-04-20 11:22 am (UTC)Yes! Storm the prison!
There's high adventure in the air, guys! Some bot's out there, guys, someone BAD.
Are we there yet?
No.
Are we there yet?
No.
Are we there yet?
Calm down, Clash!"
Anyone get the reference?
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Date: 2016-04-20 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-20 06:18 pm (UTC)They've got Scott locked up in there, guys! Heck, that's not fair, guys, and I'm MAD!
Sadie unleashed here
Date: 2016-04-20 11:48 am (UTC)Re: Sadie unleashed here
Date: 2016-04-20 12:26 pm (UTC)Re: Sadie unleashed here
Date: 2016-04-20 01:00 pm (UTC)