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ESCAPE ?
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In her drunken state Aria could barely contemplate the options or factors even though they were listed over her vision as augmented reality elements. -"Tsk!"- She gritted her teeth and looked around for an escape route. The nearest building across the street had a big window and it was in her relative reach. However, either Ace or the hatters could easily block her way. -"Fush, dammit!"
"Now , now, Ari~! Let's go back so you can rest. As a knight I'll escort you home." - Ace smiled and extended his sword to point it at the pair.
"Scary… knight"- Pierce gulped. But even though he would have liked to run away, his Role made him stay in place and hold her up firmly. That was even more terrifying, but at the same time it was giving him some strange pride or strength. Did he knew her? This whole scenario was scary, yet it wasn't.
"Bah. I don't have a home Ace." - Aria leaned even more against Pierce, her more robust frame pressing against his smaller one.- "I don't have anything. And I dont need your 'knightly' help." - This was the worst person that could have showed up. Ace was surely here because she had actually hurt Julius, and out of all dangers, the demented angry knave was something she didn't stand a chance against.
The Hatters stopped running and blocked the way where she had come from once they were near enough to see the scene, though the new enemy was someone that they hadn't foreseen.
"Well done, mouse. You got her!" -Elliot came to a stop a few meters from Aria and Pierce, but when he did Ace transformed his sword into an assault rifle and shot once at him. A mere warning that the march hare easily parried with his pistol.
"Eli, I can't get away!" -Pierce squeaked moved sideways to send a glance to Elliot. But it didn't matter. He couldn't leave her side. Blood quickly noticed Ace's fighting stance, however if the knight hadn't attacked yet meant that he wanted her alive.-"Does the castle have an interest in this girl?"- He chuckled and his cane became a machine gun.-"Then it would be a good idea that I get an interest on her too."
Ace kept his eyes fixed on her as the hatters took their own stances. She was cornered and drunk and clinging too much onto the dormouse while sending glances to the rest of the Hatters.-"Do you love that rat, Ari?"- Ace's rifle transformed back into a sword, which augured a probably worse fight.- "Or perhaps you are interested in some other criminal? "
Aria tightened her grip on Pierce and snorted.- " I don't love anyone. But no one in Wonderland knows how to love either, right?."- Her drunken gaze looked between Ace and the hatters with spite. She biologically couldn't love and it disgusted her how people from this world claimed to love. -" But how could you? Love was just an evolutionary consequences of survival for the species. You never evolved for it. None of you truly love. You just get the initial imitation the game provides and then whatever you follow with. Your so called 'love is JUST. A. FAKE." -Then her eyes turned slightly towards Blood and her tone became mocking.- "Unless you win. Then you'll never be free of the game."
"That is a naughty lie, pretty lady~!" -Dee chirped as he tightened his grip on the double-edged axe. His brother nodded and raised his respective weapon above his head. -"We'll have to punish you for such lies." -Dum prepared his axe too.
She suddenly looked upwards and more red dots appeared over her eyes. She snarled a curse in her native language. Within her field of vision, the augmented reality map showed that more upcoming enemies were closing in quickly and quietly around every possible escape route in her detection field, surely wanting to ambush the Hatter Family. If she didn't get away fast, in less than two minutes this place would be under a rain of bullets. And she wasn't so utterly wasted that she could not see it.
Getting away was definitely her number one priority.
Elliot looked at this boss, unsure if point his guns at the woman or at the knave.-"Blood?" - He was in disbelief, but this woman's words made him unsure. She made him unsure. It was not possible that she was a foreigner. But what role did she had then?
Blood tensed up but his smirk remained plastered on his face. There was something really wrong with this woman. -"That's an interesting idea, miss. But we'll need to interrogate you further on that."- Blood tipped the rim of his feathered top hat and even he took a fighting stance.- "Get her alive. Even if you cut off her legs, as long as she can speak it's fine. In fact… Don't let her speak at all. If she can't speak, then she can't give out orders to any role."
Ace took a step forward and Elliot pointed his guns at him to return the warning shot, that the knight just as easily parried with his sword. -"Don't worry, my dear and fairly drunk lady. You are just confused about the power of love in your tipsy state. Your knight will get you back to the tower after I get rid of the bad guys~!"- Her words were funny and Ace knew that behind them she was planning something, she was drunk but she was cunning, and although he was curious as to what she could try, he was more interested in getting her back and correcting or confirming her assumption about love. But before, his feral smirk fell on the hatters for the threat to his dame's legs - "And as a knight, I should get rid of anyone and anything that bother my dame."
"Then get lost because you're not wanted or needed either. None or you are." -The mercenary growled and spit on the ground, then she made deliberate movements to rummage for something in her suit's arm, from where she took out a small chewing-gum like package. After a few seconds of clumsily rubbing the gum between her fingers, she threw it directly towards the glass window where it got stuck. She would have liked to say more, but if she did then the Hatters would shot her before she got any order out. The approaching dots were gathering already above.
"Ari, you are too drunk. A piece of gum is a bad weapon" - There was almost a sweat drop over Ace's forehead. He would have expected a grenade at least. Oh well, more proof that the dame needed his knightly skills, whether she wanted them or not.
"You think you can take us, knight? How arrogant." -Blood smirked. -"But I have to agree. What could something like that do to help the young lady in her current predicament?"
Aria didn't wait. In the span of a second, she pulled Pierce into a French kiss and set her hand over his clock,
directing her will and determination to him just like she had tried with Julius in an attempt to make the mortician remember. Except that this time her input meant 'protect'. Immediately she felt the heavy tiredness of using her energy to imbue Pierce's abilities with a power boost, but she needed an immediate meat-shield and the only thing useful to slow down the holders long enough for her to try and escape was to use another Role Holder.
That kiss startled everyone and started everything.
Ace jumped forward and attacked Pierce with a lower down cut from his sword, while Aria rolled away on the floor past the knight to avoid Elliot and Blood's shootings at Ace. The Bloody Twins yelled at the graverobber for getting attention of the drunk and crazy new Role Holder while moving forward with their axes ready to get her.
"Cover my escape, Dormouse!"
As her command resounded deep over Pierce's role, with the help of the forced electrical infuse of her suit's systems, Aria rose up and jumped away once more. She was rolling over the floor to get closer to the window while avoiding and axe directed at her neck just as the first bullets hit the street just when the plastic explosive gum finally expanded, it imploded the glass of the window.
Ace tried to move and intercept the bloody twins in their way to the female while parrying or evading the bullets from above and from the hatters, but to everyone's surprise, Pierce was the one who intercepted him, managing the feat of blocking the knave's sword with his butcher's knife. Ace smiled sardonically at the terrified tiny adult while taking out his other sword to deflect the bullets coming his way at the same time that he pressed his sword over Pierce's knife. -"Well, well. Looks like you have some balls after all mousy!" - Under any other circumstance, this would have been extremely fun, however, his attention was slightly diverted towards Aria when she screamed after a couple bullets hit her back from above as she ran towards the broken window.
His eyes widened and his clock almost stopped when he saw her stumble to the ground. For once he didn't knew how long, he felt fear. Just like when the Julius from his youth had been killed in front of him, that time when he had been too weak to do do anything; too useless, and powerless to prevent it. However, his clock ticked time moved on for him when Aria let out a new curse and didn't hesitated to take the change of the bullets stalled the twins behind her, to reach the building and jump inside through the broken window.
Not a second after she was inside, from the rooftop closest to the hatters, a new group of gunmen began shooting towards Pierce and Ace. Pierce jumped aside and blocked the bullets, feeling himself stronger and faster than ever after that kiss, and now that she had escaped, he found that he could get away. Ace however, followed after this dame at the expense of turning his back on the fight and getting hit by a couple bullets as he jumped through the shattered window. Once inside, he caught a glance of a shadow heading upstairs. He of course followed.
On her part and right after jumping inside the building, Aria had ran towards the closest possible exit at the other side of the building. However, her perimeter showed more foes coming from that side, obviously with the intention of surprising the hatters into a crossed fire from below. She tried reaching a side window, but the bullets that came from that way almost hit her, to her luck, her shadow extended below her into a sort of flat pool to make her slip and land not so gracefully on her face due to her drunkenness behind a wall.
"Pin#$%" ma#$&%! , Me lleva la $#&!Q"&$#!" - Her suit could take a few light caliber bullet hits, but not many and any head shot meant game over. Her vision was already showing the yellow warnings due to the hits she had gotten already on her back and fighting was not even an option for her. She heard some heavy footsteps behind from the place she had entered, and with no choice, she dived towards the stairs to climb up, hoping to find a way to the roof or some other escape route.
The fem foreign merc was breathing hard and were it not for the gyroscope in her systems and the electric shocks in her spinal cord at the right moments, she would have tripped due to the alcohol induced dizziness. But she couldn't stop. Once up, there was only one room possible and she dived towards it. It had only one window, but when she ran towards it she saw that it led directly to a bunch of faceless gunmen on the next building.
"On the window!" -One of them spotted her and signaled to his companions.
She turned around just as bullets broke the window, and then an object was thrown inside. It was a gas bomb that began leaking some dark blue fog into the room. Shadows moved from her suit and reformed over her face in the shape of a mask, but she had already inhaled the gas and her consciousness was going away.
There were no escape routes, but another possibility showed the image of an item in her vision. One of the relics she had. The sound of someone coming towards the room settled it. Between coughs she cussed and reached inside her suit to take out the small relic cube that would cut the room from space for an entire time change. She imbued it with the last of her conscious strength and will, and threw it in the air.
"Ari!" -Ace ran into the room in time to catch her falling unconscious body before she hit the floor.
The gas filled the room but Ace barely noticed it or the corners of the room litting up and all external sounds getting muffled. Then, while holding her against his chest he too began coughing and fell unconscious due to the gas .
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I don't know who was more distressing or in distress XD
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What you think about that conception of love here in Wonderland? In Peter's manga its revelaed that Peter basically learned to love by reaading corny literature, and its pointed out that no one here really lovesor at least knows how to love. But it makes sense I think, people in Wonerland didn't 'evolve' , so perhaps love develops different stuff for each one of them.
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Oh yeah, and if you're interested, Joker's (Black) mature M-shot is already out. That's where she got this relic.