Skye looked left and right, but of course there was no sight of the other woman. The car was still there – of course - but that left her with the question of where to go. Skye cursed. In that moment she heard the howling of a motor. A motorcycle, to be precise, followed by the strange, loud noise of several vehicles colliding. Whatever it was, it sounded like trouble, and that was an undeniable clue of Faust's whereabouts.
When Skye ran up to the road where the noise had come from she saw several men on the ground, half buried under their bikes, groaning and complaining about bruises, while others were already on their feet, cursing and shouting after a motorcycle that quickly vanished in the small streets of Casablanca.
Skye didn't waste time. She picked up the nearest motorcycle before the rightful owner could get up and followed Agent Faust.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
"I thought you said you could find them," Brandt complained. They had been driving around aimlessly for over an hour now.
"I said I could locate them, you have to find them," Luther clarified from the passenger's sear of their rented 4x4.
"Right," Brandt said, barely concealing his temper. This was beginning to feel pointless.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
The bike was technically too big for Skye, and that was the one but unavoidable problem. Hence, when she turned into the curve just like all the others before her, she underestimated her speed, couldn't keep her balance and came dangerously close to the ground. She felt the weight of the motorcycle turn against her, but there was no chance to correct her error in time without either crashing into a building or the white 4x4 that had managed to brake just in time. Skye felt she had no choice, but to let the bike meet the ground and crash – only preferably without her inbetween. In the last possible moment she pushed herself off and managed to roll. She stopped, lying sideways on the edge of the dusty street just a couple of inches next to the wall of the next house, feeling a bit scratched, but that was all. The bike had crashed into the wall a couple of metres away. It now looked strangely squashed, one wheel was still spinning through the thin smoke cloud curling up from it.
Skye looked up just in time to see a car come to a halt with screeching tyres, suddenly sliding and just barely avoiding a crash with the 4x4.
"Holy shit," she muttered when she recognized their BMW – and Ethan was driving. And... waving? The next moment the BMW sped up again in the direction Ilsa and her buddies had taken, and just in time Skye caught a glimpse of Benji on the passenger's seat. Not wasting a second, she crossed the narrow street and opened the door of the large 4x4.
"Follow that car!" she shouted, smashing the door shut.
"Skye?" it sounded incredulously.
"Brandt?"
"Kid?" Luther chimed in, and only then she noticed that they were wasting precious seconds.
"I'll explain later, drive!"
The rest of the motorcycles shot out of the side-street, in fast pursuit of Ilsa, and apparently now also Ethan and Benji.
But Brandt was already reversing in order to get the car into the right position.
"It's a high speed chase. You just had to get the 4x4, didn't you," he said angrily to Luther while furiously shifting gears.
"Don't blame me, you chose the car."
"You just had to have it!" Brandt shouted back.
"What, you want me to drive?" Luther threatened. "Look at how slow you got, speed it up!"
Skye shifted in the backseat in exasperation, the bikes were already out of sight, same went for the BMW. What the hell were they doing? Finally, the car was turned around and Brandt gave everything the 4x4 had.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
"Have you got your seatbelt on?" Ethan asked dead-serious while driving backwards at top speed.
"You're asking me that now?!" Benji replied, unable to keep a high-pitched note out of his voice, but the next second other things proved more distracting.
Such as crashing.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
"That's them!" Skye shouted, but apart from that all they could do was watch in stunned silence how the silver car crashed backwards at full speed through the gate and somersaulted once, twice, three times, before landing on its roof and sliding several metres before coming to a stop.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
All Ethan could hear was a weirdly high-pitched note that seemed to originate from inside his head. The airbag slowly deflated and hung uselessly in front of him, revealing dusty ground in front of the windshield. Up was down. His sunglasses lay strangely intact in the middle of dirt and glass fragments.
Still slightly dazed, he managed to turn his head a bit to the right. Benji was limply hanging in his seat, held in place only by his seatbelt. His head lay loosely on what used to be the ceiling of the car, tilted in an angle that didn't look healthy. His eyes were closed and Ethan could see no apparent movement. But before he could further assess this situation, a new problem appeared. His hearing had secretly returned and he noticed the discomforting sound of a motorcycle, coming to a halt in close vicinity.
Ethan turned his head the other way, and he didn't like what he was seeing. Without any rush the driver was dismounting his vehicle. Stuck in his current predicament, all Ethan could see were the man's boots, making cracking noises on the fragments of the car's former windows with every step he took towards him.
Hunt reached to unbuckle his seatbelt, but it was stuck. He pulled, ripped, and tugged at it, but it wouldn't give way. Simultaneously the man stepped closer, fully aware that Hunt had nowhere to run and therefore in no hurry. Ethan was on the verge of panicking when the damn belt just wouldn't waver. The guy approaching him was at the car, about to bend down. Just when Ethan was mentally preparing for a struggle that most likely – how had Benji put it so eloquently – wasn't gonna end well, a huge car stopped just next to him, the front tyre level with his head, hitting the motorcyclist and sending him tumbling ahead and down to the ground, where he came to a stop and wouldn't move anymore.
Ethan Hunt had trouble recalling when he'd last been so relieved, and sighed deeply, closing his eyes again for a second. A face appeared next to him.
"Are we good?" Brandt asked.
Ethan decided to leave all the explanations for later when he detected the demanding for answers beneath the concern in the analyst's face at first glance, and play it cool instead. "Things... got a little out of hand."
He heard steps. Someone was running around the car.
"Benji?" Skye's voice sounded, calm by professional force, but not quite covering up her worry. She bent down and her eyes widened in shock, when Benji suddenly flinched awake.
"AAAARGH! Look out!" the Brit called, attempting to push himself of the ceiling and bouncing back into his seat, before he realised the new conditions of the vehicle's alignment. He looked so almost comically confused, that Skye breathed out an enormous amount of air before she allowed herself to fall down, where she leaned against the car and started laughing in relief.
Meanwhile Luther tried to help Ethan out of the car, but Hunt just waved his friend away, trying to reassure him that he was fine.
Skye moved out of the way when Brandt and Luther came around to them. The analyst opened the door of the upside down passenger seat.
"Oh, hey boys, what did I miss?" Benji said smoothly when he caught sight of them, causing Skye to continue chuckling.
Brandt already bent down and whipped out his pocket knife in order to cut the seatbelt.
"Oooh, that looks sharp," Benji said, respectfully sucking in air. "Careful! Careful," he advised him. The analyst had to suppress a smile at the way his friend craned his neck away, then he decided to make short work of it and pulled the techie out through the door.
Benji scrambled up to his feet and, without thinking much about it, hugged Brandt. The men patted each others' shoulders comradely before letting go.
Luther, as well, slapped his back, maybe a little too hard, but Benji grinned nevertheless.
"Good to see you," he said, to which Brandt just nodded in agreement. Then the technician turned around to Skye, who had stayed close the entire time in case he needed steadying. They skipped the Are you all right? That was quite a fall. - And what about your spectacular car spin? And why did you let Ethan drive anyway? as that all passed unspoken between them by means of a single glance. Instead Skye caught him in a tight hug, making use of the moment before the adrenaline would wear off and their various bruises would make this far less pleasant.
When they let go of each other, she looked around, strangely taking comfort in the fact that they weren't all on their own anymore. Luther and Brandt were here to help them, that much was certain, and together they would -
"Hold on a second," she said, looking around. "Where's Ethan?"