"Well, at least we have guns now," Kirito remarked as he fiddled with a magazine from the pistol that he had pulled off of one of the bodies. Klein had already claimed the SMG, and, by the crucial Law of Dibs, Agil and Kirito couldn't really do anything about it.
"That doesn't change the fact that we're totally fucked, Kirito," Agil said as he gave the slight college student a look. "Any advantage that we had is gone now that we know how these guys are armed. You're not 'The Black Gunman'. Bullets aren't exactly our thing."
Klein, despite the current situation, couldn't resist. "No, 'The Black Gunman' would be you, Agil. Well, if you had a gun, anyway. Which you don't. Heh. Get it? Because you're…" He was cutoff as he was forced to dodge a half-hearted punch from said 'Black Gun-less-man'.
"Have some faith, Agil. I have a plan."
Agil halted his pursuit and faced Kirito with a deadpan look on his face. "Does it involve a thrown phone and a bad Chuck reference again? Because, if it does, I'm just gonna get it over with now and jump off the roof."
Kirito ignored the (hopefully) sarcastic remark and pulled out his phone. Yui appeared on the screen, and he began explaining his plan. "Yui, gather up as much info as you can about these guys and get it to the police. Try 911, or better yet, use those databases to find a specific number. We'll probably get useful help here faster. Either way, I need to leave the phone out here. It's impossible to get a cell signal inside, with all of the lab equipment."
That happened to be one of the biggest issues with the situation. Asuna was currently in her General Physics class, which, of course, was in the Science building. The building housed all kinds of labs, some literally designed to block all exterior radio waves to prevent interference. In a very questionable design choice, one of these labs was on the very top floor of the building, and it blocked anything resembling a cell signal from getting into the building. Hell, there wasn't even any wireless internet available anywhere outside of the café in the lobby, to avoid needless interference.
Next, Kirito turned to his friends. "Agil, you're gonna hate this, but it's the only way. We're going to go in loud and fast, cause some chaos, and haul ass to Asuna's room. Once we get there, we'll barricade ourselves in."
Agil opened his mouth to protest, but Klein beat him to it. "And then what? We'll just be three extra hostages, if we even make it that far."
Kirito smiled. "For a little while, yeah. But Yui's getting help, remember? When the calvary comes, we'll get out. Whether it's rescue or just us using the chaos, it should be enough. Remember, Asuna isn't exactly a damsel in distress. If we need to fight our way out, so be it. We can all hold our own."
Agil grimaced. He had to admit that the plan wasn't… horrible. Sprinting through the building would almost exclusively create close combat encounters, and they could more than handle themselves there. But there was just so much that could go wrong…
"Well, it's all we got, and we don't exactly have time to think of anything else. Let's do it."
Kirito smirked.
A couple of minutes later, they were ready. Klein stood directly in fron of the access hatch, ready to take point. He had several ammo magazines sticking out of the many pockets of his old North Face jacket, ready to be loaded into his submachine gun at a moment's notice. His Katana, a futile weapon for his role, remained sheathed on his back.
Kirito, they decided, would be the designated 'rusher'. If therwere forced to slow down, Kirito would use Klein's covering fire to get in close enough to use his swords. He stood directly behind Klein, pistol temporarily in hand, ready to jump right after his shaggy friend. His trusy swords would remain sheathed until the trio was safely inside, where he would give the pistol to Agil.
Agil, as Kirito had smugly put it, was the 'doorman'. He would open the hatch for Klein, hopefully reducing the total time of the whole shebang and preserving what was left of their dwindling element of surprise. Once inside, he would take the pistol and cover their rear. If the plan went perfectly, they would storm right by far more enemies than they would actually disable, and somebody had to keep those left behind from catching up. Kirito might have been the better shot, but his dual swords would like be more effective than Agil's salvaged fire axe.
Yui, meanwhile, was using an alarming portion of her processing power to ponder the possibility of AI self-harm, as she tried to navigate the infuriating bog of bureaucracy between her and the Emergency Response Services that she seeked.
"You guys ready?" Kirito asked as he did a final once-over of his hastily assembled mental checklist.
Agil and Klein simply nodded. There were times to plan, to shrewdly cross examine every possible eventuality of an endeavor. Agil liked those times. This, however, was not one of those occasions. No, this situation called for haste and adaptability. It was…
Well, Klein put it best.
"Time's up, let's do this!" Klein called out as Agil pulled the hatch open. "LEEEEEROYYYYY JENKKKKKINSS!"
Kirito dove through the opened hatch as soon as Klein's body was clear. He was only half-ready for the following ten foot drop, but he recovered smoothly… enough. Instantly on high alert, he raised his pistol and scanned the area for potential targets. His laser focus was soon interrupted by a groan.
"Man that hurt! Ugh, all clear, by the way," Klein whimpered from the floor, where he was still laying on his back. So much for Leeroy Jenkins. He brought himself to his feet just as Agil finished smugly climbing down the ladder to join them.
They were in a stairwell, surrounded only by drab off-white paint and the musky smell that one could only find in a school corridor. Wordlessly, they began moving in their crude formation. Agil had warned that the opening of the hatch would've likely set off an alarm of some kind, and they needed to gain as much ground as possible before somebody came to check it out.
Surely enough, just as they reached the landing for the 8th floor, a door slammed open on the landing beneath them. Accented military chatter began to echo through the stairwell.
Kirito was the first to take action. He wedged his body under the handrail and wrapped his fingers around the lip on the edge of the stairs. He caught his friends' eyes and nodded towards the next section of steps, silently telling them to move up when he did, well, whatever it was that he was doing. They nodded in return, seemingly understanding the gist of the gesture. Kirito took a deep breath and jumped.
He threw his body out into the center of the stairwell, directly over the practically bottomless abyss. As he began to drop, he used his grip on the edge to pull himself forward, and he let go. As his head cleared the steps, the situation came into view. There were three of them, just like the last time on the roof, and they were dressed in similar black tactical garb. There was, unfortunately, one big difference. This time, they all had guns. Big, mean looking guns.
Kirito brought his hands up to the sheathed swords on his back as he fell toward the landing, ready to spring into combat. In SAO, it would have been perfect. He would have used his momentum to roll straight onto his feet, quickly slashing at and disarming his reeling opponents.
Unfortunately for him, this wasn't SAO, and Kazuto Kirigaya had spent far too much of his time since SAO eating cheese puffs and generally not moving. So, it shouldn't have surprised him when his foot caught on the railing below him, catapulting him into a face plant of epic proportions.
Thankfully, the men were justifiably confused by the bellyflopping kid from the sky, and they took a precious second or two to attempt to process whatever the fuck had just happened. That was more than enough time for Klein to come around the corner, raise his gun, and spray the enemies in a shower of hot lead while Kirito lay safely prone on the floor.
Klein fought off the urge to make fun of his friends' woeful attempt at badassery as he pulled Kirito to his feet. It would have to wait. Gunfire in a tiny enclosed space like this was, simply put, loud as fuck, and there would inevitably be more people heading this way to investigate.
Agil pocketed his pistol as he pulled the assault rifle and some clips off of one of the men. "Let's go."
Captain Alex Casey was not having a good day. Not one bit.
It had started off reasonably well enough. She'd managed to not burn her breakfast toast, a nearly impossible feat with the new toaster her husband had had bought the week before. Her dog decided to not pee all over the newspaper on their morning walk, so that was a nice change of pace as well. No, everything was quite fine until she turned on the news.
A break to commercials broke her focus, and she was out the door before the broadcast resumed. The city, HER city, was under attack. And the ex-marine wasn't going to sit idly by.
Except, well, she basically was. She was a freshly promoted SWAT Captain, and the sheer chaos in the office ensured that her and her new team were strictly on the sidelines. She'd arrived 15 minutes prior and she was still sitting there, twiddling her thumbs.
Solid information was hard to come by. The city had sent a massive response team to the first confirmed reports, which stated that the city's Grand Mall was under attack. Then, a smaller team was sent to the Riverwalk, where several of the district's hipster residents had reported gunfire. More and more reports came in, and nobody really knew which to believe.
"Captain Casey!"
Casey quickly turned around to find the source of the voice, and she was met with the face of her CO. "Sir."
"There's a little girl on line 4 that we can't hang up on. Go and talk to her."
Casey raised her eyebrow. "Sir, to be frank, who cares about the feelings of a little girl on a day like this? We need that line open. Just hang up."
Her CO glanced sideways. "We've been trying that for 20 minutes. She has the line forced open, and she's requesting a SWAT captain. It's… strange."
"A little girl?"
"Just answer the phone, smartass. That's an order."
Casey rolled her eyes and returned to her desk. She opened line 4 and picked up her phone.
"Captain Alex Casey speaking."
Surely enough, there was a little girl on the other end. Or, it sounded like a little girl. She certainly wasn't talking like one, though.
"Finally, a captain. Ms. Casey, a building at the college is under attack. Multiple gunmen confirmed."
Somehow, this wasn't sitting right with the Captain. "Um, to whom am I speaking?"
The girl cleared her throat. "You said your name was Alex Casey, correct? Newly promoted captain, former marine… Gotcha here. OK, so I'm not a little girl, really. No time to explain that, though. I'm pushing a briefing of the situation onto your desktop. It should be there… now."
Surely enough, a text file popped onto her screen. "Wait, how did you do that? This network is secure."
"Not for me. My Mommy and Daddy need help. Everything you need should be in that document. Photos and proof, too. Just get here as soon as possible."
With that, the line clicked, and the call dropped. Casey shifted her focus to her computer, still utterly confounded by whatever had just happened. She skimmed through the document, and could hardly believe what she was reading. It was incredibly comprehensive. There was info on the attackers, along with known identities and arms. Then there were the kids, from the neighboring building, who had forced their way in to help a friend. With fucking swords. Jeez.
She went back to the beginning of the report and read it from the top. She would need all of the info that she could get before briefing her team. In similar times, her dad hadn't followed orders to be patient. Neither would she. Heh, guess it was in her blood.
Still, she had never given a briefing before… Oh well, first time for everything. Those kids were on their own, and they needed somebody the even the sides out, just a little bit.
AN: Sorry about the long wait for the chapter! Life threw me some haymakers, and its tough to write something like this when I'm down in the dumps. I'm out of my little funk though, and there's much more on the way soon! That being said, if you want to stay updated on the shit going on in my life, you can still be the first follower of my Tumblr blog, treykuzon! Please! I swear, I don't usually bite. That was only that one time.
So, there's more to this attack than just the college. Interesting... :P Also, per the many comments and PMs pointing it out, I fixed Klein's and Agil's weapons. I plan on going back and editing the previous chapters right after this goes up, though it might have to wait a bit. Otherwise, we meet an OC this chapter, although she really isn't all that original. If you figured it out, shhhhhh.
Probably gonna post up the experimental FMA-music thingy I've been working on before the next chapter, but it shouldn't be too long. Certainly not 3 weeks like this time. Ugh.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed, and be sure to leave some reviews with your thoughts, good or bad.
-theb3arjew
