Cargill Salt Terminal
Tampa, Florida
April 19, 2144

Malcolm already had his armor zipped up tight. A full torso, thin polyalloy weave set within a black leather overcoat, waist length. Collar folded into place, earcomm already set to a squad-wide channel, short arm particle beam rifle cinched at his chest.

He took only a moment to toss each booted foot up on the passenger seat of the van when he exited, rechecking and fastening the straps, to be sure they were snug. And as much as to give the rest of the team time to pour out of the van and move to the rear, where Victor King passed their gear out to them.

A quick tug to loosen the blade at his waist, a flick to unlatch the restraining band of his hostler, freeing the Peacekeeper pulse pistol there, and he moved to the rear of the van. Coming along behind the squad to watch until they'd received munitions and were busy putting everything in place, making themselves ready, looking to him for instruction.

The dull roar of a half dozen hydrogen burning motorcycles rose behind them, Dusty and his 'berserkers' finally coming along down the highway to join them. Just late enough to remind everyone they were here because they wanted to be, not because Reed would have tossed them all in a zero gravity well for a week or two if they didn't. Certainly nothing like that.

He waited at least until the bikers parked and dismounted, moving casually to join the rest of them, before speaking. Mostly waiting for that in order to do so without having to compete with all the noise.

"This is going to go a bit differently than what we're all used to." He said, turning back to his own squad. "But I expect you'll all perform exceptionally, as always."

His squad said nothing, just standing ready and waiting.

But the bikers were a bit disgruntled at being conscripted as they'd been, so they took their time joining them. That gave Victor enough time to work up the nerve to say what they were all thinking.

"Sir, is working with these guys really necessary?" He asked.

It was respectfully worded and his tone was even, but Malcolm knew well enough he was more than a little put out by it all. They all were.

"It's not my decision, King." Malcolm said, facing the man. "But then it's not a bad decision. We're looking at no less than four high order demons here. Rosiers, at least, of the fourth family. Succubi, so they don't quite fit directly into the chain of command, but they are powerful. And we can expect they'll attract a following if they linger anywhere for very long, as they have here."

"Just not really sure about relying on these people, sir." Victor said, stiffly.

Dusty had already arrived, more than a step or two ahead of his men. So he had an opinion of his own, naturally.

"Not real sure about you neither." He said. "We've took on a few demons before. How about you, son?"

"More than a few." Victor said right back, challenging the man.

"That's enough." Malcolm said, quietly, before things could even begin to escalate here.

And that was that. Victor stifled right away. So he turned to Dusty, nodding to the side at his team.

"This is my squad." He said. "My own personal fire team. We're not bringing anything more into this just yet, so we'll be relying on you and your men to do the heavy hitting today, understand?"

Dusty frowned, but nodded at that.

His men behind him, a half dozen extremely dubious looking sorts...they said nothing. Just standing, staring the government hit squad down. Long hair, hardened faces, biker leathers and boots...the whole supposedly intimidating bit.

"You've all been briefed on Dusty Jones here." Malcolm said, extending a hand to indicate the old, worn out man with the gray-haired pony tail and faded blue jeans. "These are his associates; Luke, Mason, Nathan, Cole, Grant and Preston."

Malcolm indicated each one in turn for his squad. By name, smoothly and easily. Which shifted a bit of the staring attention of those men to him, each a little surprised he not only knew their names but knew them well enough to just run them right off like that.

"My team," He said, shifting to them. "Victor King, fire team operator and coordinator."

Victor nodded sharply. Eyes hidden behind stereotypical thin sunglasses, of the sort practically issued to government agents, it would seem. His hair trimmed short, deep black skin and a general bearing and demeanor that somehow made it perfectly clear he was North American, born and raised, even before the slight Midwestern accent gave that away.

"Aliyah Nazeem." He said next, extending a hand to the bronze toned woman in body armor standing next to Victor. Staring back intently at the berserkers trying to stare her down. "Breach and demolitions. She also our seer."

Dusty opened his mouth the ask, but Aliyah didn't wait.

"Seer." She explained. "Clairvoyant."

All of the berserkers turned their attention on her now. None of them liking that one bit, it was easy to see.

She gave them a half smile, quirking up the corner of her mouth at them, but she didn't say anything more. Reed was already staring at her, waiting for her to, so he could break her off. She held her tongue then and just smirked. Just a little.

It was still a widely held belief among hunters that psychic abilities were a form of magic, and magic was just plain bad news. So she'd rather hoped someone would make an issue of having a clairvoyant on the team, so she could point out the irony of a berserker having objected to that.

"Rico Chavez, heavy weapons." Malcolm said next. After pulling the warning glare he leveled on Aliyah away. And Rico at least wasn't staring coldly at anyone. He grinned in a relatively friendly manner and the bikers afforded him some small measure of respect right back.

Most likely due to the rather large plasma cannon he had strapped to his chest, Malcolm supposed. Perhaps sensing something of a kindred spirit, an unabashed preference for wholesale destruction.

"Felicity White," He said, introducing the last of his team. Another North American, tall, athletic and blond. "Our sniper and spotter."

And she, finally, the berserkers didn't glare at, try to stare down or otherwise disapprove of. They all smiled at her. Outright leering in a couple of cases. Perhaps an appreciative once over here and there, just to be perfectly obvious about it...

She was admittedly rather attractive. And blonde.

Felicity cut her eyes over at Malcolm for a short moment, the communication there being perfectly clear.

Seriously, sir?

Malcolm smirked at that, but left it alone.

"Alright then." He said. "Overwatch has the mine and the gathering there located just over a hundred meters beyond these woods."

He half turned, to point in the proper direction, just off the highway where they all stood.

"We'll move through and take position along the tree line," He said. "Twenty meters from the excavation site. The plan is quite simple. We've tasked an old satellite missile defense system to project the first pentacle of Mercury right down around them. That's a weak trap for this situation, especially considering it's beamed from orbit, but that's what we want.

"The lower order demons, Jahi's little camp followers, they'll be trapped. Dusty and his men will deal with them. Jahi and the succubi...those are our targets. Their powers will be cut down somewhat, not overruled entirely, but they won't be able to reach outside the pentacle at all. The berserkers can expect to be tossed about a bit..."

"Can't touch us." Dusty argued. "Not while we're in full blood."

Malcolm gave him a dubious glance at that, but didn't argue.

"Alright, if you say so." He nodded. "All the better then. Your men take on the lesser demons, we'll take Jahi and her troupe. They're strong enough to leave the circle in spirit form, so we'll give them every reason to. Best case scenario, they evacuate their hosts to retreat incorporeally and we nab one or two before they get away. Worst case...we simply do enough damage to the hosts they're riding that they're forced to leave them. And we nab a couple of them regardless."

"You want 'em to smoke out?" Dusty asked, doubtfully. "Figured you'd want to catch one or two for interrogation."

"Exactly the plan." Malcolm smirked. "We don't need them riding a host for that. Better if they aren't."

"How the hell are you gonna...?" Dusty argued.

But Victor cut him off. "Just leave that to us. Are you and your men going to be able to handle your part of this?"

Dusty snorted at him, almost incredulously.

"Son, I reckon you don't know who you're talking to." He said. "More'n likely, Jahi and them'll go on ahead and smoke out the second they see us comin'."

Victor frowned at that, turning his doubts on Malcolm.

Malcolm just shrugged lightly back at him, tilting his head a bit. So, yes, that apparently wasn't a completely ridiculous notion.

"Let's get into position." Malcolm said, getting things back on track quickly. "We'll set up, Aliyah will trance and mark targets for our team, then we'll call down the pentacle. Dusty and the berserkers move in, tangle with the lower order demons and keep the royals busy, then we'll pop water and start taking out the succubi. I doubt we'll capture Jahi today, but we're bound to get one of them. That's all we need for now."

"And the rest of them sluts run off to do the ritual anyway." Dusty frowned. "Don't see the point in this, if we ain't sending 'em all back to hell."

Victor frowned at that.

"We need to know where this ritual is taking place exactly." He said. "Where and when. Then we can make the call and hit them in force there."

"Ought to just do that here."

"Exorcising four high order succubi..." Malcolm said. "That's a bit of a tall order. We simply won't be granted the manpower and the authority something like that requires until we have one of these succubi in hand, and some confirmed intelligence from them as well. I'm certain we can get them out of their hosts and capture one or two, but that's about all we'll manage here today. That will have to be enough for now."

Dusty looked ready to argue so more, so Malcolm cut him.

"Mr. Jones," He said, trying to reason with him. "You have to understand how this works. The entire point of our organization is to keep the intervention of mortal governing authorities out of these matters. That is our job."

"You work for the gover'ment."

"Exactly right." He nodded. "They can't be involved and they're well aware of that. There is a certain line in the sand that cannot be crossed without forcing matters to escalate quickly and entirely out of control. There is a good reason you hunters have had to bear the brunt of this for the last thousand years or so. Our job is make sure it is not necessary for governing authorities to ever have to intervene. As it is now, they may well be forced to. We're here to minimize that as much as possible."

Victor jumped in then, bringing the issue to a point.

"We have to make sure that if we strike in force," He said. "That it's a quick, hard strike that settles this fast. So we can pull right back out again and pretend it never happened. You follow?"

Dusty grumbled a bit, but eventually shrugged and gestured irritably at the woods near to hand.

Whatever. He didn't want to work with government folk anyway.

Malcolm nodded, giving his team a quick assessment to confirm they were ready.

And he stepped aside, tilting his head sideways toward the wood, to send King on head of him. He and the rest of his team, while he followed behind, quite intentionally putting himself between his squad and the very disgruntled berserkers.

The second phase had gone just fine. It was actually pretty nice.

They'd held hands while she drove and they'd talked about things. Just casual conversation, reminiscing, that sort of thing.

Then after a while it got a little tougher. She insisted that had to talk about some hard things. Dig a little deeper, so the bond would have something to really chew on.

So they talked about Arkali. What it had been like for her and how traumatic and humiliating it had been going through all that. Especially with the two people she valued most in the whole universe both being there to see her behaving so irrationally and violently...

Trip had talked about just how much it had freaked him out. He'd been nine years old, for crying out loud. He didn't even really remember the incident. So much time had past, and he'd been so young...he mostly just remembered memories of it. Memories of memories. It even became obvious really quick that a lot of what he 'remembered' was wrong. The whole thing had gotten so warped out of shape over the years, mostly because it had been so traumatic for him, too.

In the end it was a disturbing conversation but they got through it well enough. And as predicted, it brought them closer. The bond had indeed gotten right to work making that happen. Encouraging them to understanding, finding and sharing insights between the two of them...moving in some very subtle ways to make sure they each had access to one another's perspective on the issue and the motivation to seek and reach a common understanding.

It was frankly a little amazing.

He could absolutely see why Vulcans made such a big deal out of this thing. With the sort of tools the bond brought to the party, he couldn't imagine anything that a bonded couple couldn't work through, so long as they actually wanted to work through it.

That was the kicker, of course. Couples didn't always want to work through things. And the bond was centered entirely in T'Pol, since he wasn't Vulcan to begin with, so she'd definitely have to be willing to let it go to work.

But if she did, and they did, and they were bonded...

Yeah, pretty damned amazing. He could certainly see how that'd be handy.

Wasn't even an hour before he suddenly realized she'd gotten quiet. Then she reached over and hit the autopilot so she could tilt her head a little and focus on something...

He figured it out pretty quick. She was feeling what he was feeling. Which naturally prompted him to take a second look and...yeah, there she was. Just right there. He hadn't even noticed until then, it was so subtle.

She was Vulcan and she was highly...well, insanely disciplined when it came to emotion, so he had some doubts he'd even sense anything. But on the other hand, she was Vulcan. So, just like she'd always said, her emotions were crazy powerful. Flat out super-charged. Everything she felt was just...over the top.

Irritated? No, she didn't get irritated when you teased her about her ears. She got homicidal and wanted to bash your face in about it.

Affectionate? No, not exactly. More like the sudden, otherwise overpowering impulse to grab you and squeeze you with all her Vulcan strength until your eyeballs literally popped out because you smiled about that thing that happened whenever.

Pleased? Again, no. Nothing merely 'pleased' her. Instead she was moved to cry and weep with joy at how she really appreciated the color of your shirt...

Yeah, Vulcans were nuts.

He'd always known that. She'd made it perfectly clear every single time the subject had come up, to be sure he understood why she took the whole Surak discipline and logic thing so seriously, but to actually sense it...that kinda threw him for a loop.

And that was the fully suppressed version of that. Just a vague peek at what lie way out there beyond all the rigid, very unforgiving discipline she was constantly cracking the whip with in there.

Seriously. Damn.

But, she, on the other hand...she was completely fascinated with his emotions. How unrestrained and utterly free they were by comparison. A characterization he immediately objected to, citing all the various ways he and every other Human did indeed exercise quite a lot of control over their impulses and even the emotions behind them...

Until she just cocked an eyebrow at him, and he had to admit that yeah, relative to her...he was a pretty wild and crazy guy.

The thing that really got him though...the thing that really struck home...

She was envious. A lot.

That was the first really strong impression he picked up. Followed immediately by her embarrassment that he'd picked up on that.

She envied Humans. To be so comparatively free emotionally, yet having such a shorter range of emotional power relative to Vulcans, so that it wasn't even dangerous to be emotional, again relatively speaking...she really envied that. Wanted it. Wished she had it.

He'd always suspected, and many things she'd said over the years reinforced it, but that was when it finally broke clearly upon his mind. That was when he finally, fully understood.

That's why she came to Earth. Why she'd stayed when she had every reason to return home. She was as free here as she possibly could be, in a way she could never be on Vulcan.

She loved it here. She loved Humans. Loved interacting with them, despite the million and one ways they got on her nerves just about constantly. Loved the emotional expressions and easy mutual comfort and humor and smiling and touching and joy...

And she didn't love logic.

That just about floored him.

She hated logic. But it was necessary.

Or maybe it would be more accurate to say she did love it and was glad she had it...she just really intensely hated that it was necessary.

She was more than a little conflicted on the issue really. She envied Humans and, when you got right down to it, wished she were Human. But on the other hand...Humans were kinda dumb. They were pretty illogical, too. Rarely rational.

Got on her nerves a lot.

So she was conflicted, yes, but she was hooked. And he understood finally just why she'd always insisted she could never go back to Vulcan.

"I never realized you were envious of my people." He said.

Except...

No, he hadn't said that. She had said that.

"Huh?" He said, confused.

She glanced over at him, where they were still holding hands.

"I never realized you were envious of..." She repeated.

"Yeah, sorry, I heard you." He said, trying to recover a bit. "I just...wait, I am?"

She gave him the eyebrow again. Because he was a being a dumb Human, apparently.

"I sense it quite clearly." She said. "You are envious and wish you were capable of the same self control and mental clarity."

Trip's eyes flickered, trying to see where that's what he felt...

And...

"Huh." He said, surprised at himself. "Yeah, I guess I am. I never really thought about it, but...yeah, I really do envy you guys. Although, now that I see why you're like that, maybe not so much. Looks like you have to use most of that just keeping things in check. I get tired just thinking about it."

T'Pol, to his utter astonishment, smirked slightly at that.

Internally, not on the outside. Of course.

"I can say the same." She said, lightly. "I never realized that your emotional range was so limited. Seeing that now, I wonder if it is worth the lack of discipline required to allow such limited emotionality free range. I do not think I would find the trade off worth it after all."

"I dunno." Trip argued. "We can have some pretty powerful emotions sometimes..."

"Not really."

"No, we really can. Like...look at the sun setting out there. See how beautiful that is? I love that. If I were allow myself to, I could really..."

"That is a very tame emotional response." T'Pol said, already sensing it. "You are not capable of fully appreciating it."

"No, T'Pol. I really love..."

Something flooded through his senses. Flowing through the hand he held in hers, up through his arm and into his mind...

And that sunset was suddenly the most amazingly, wonderfully, incredibly and impossibly beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his entire life.

He was struck dumb. His jaw dropped, eyes practically bugging out of his head.

Just completely lost in the wide open door to eternal paradise that lay before him, out there beyond the bug's windshield, where the clouds in the sky reflected the setting sun in a wash and wave of marvelous crimson and amber...

Then it was gone and...

Just another dumb sunset. Not...really all that interesting...

"Wow." He said, still staring.

Not at the sunset. Boring, stupid sunset out there. The sunset that had just been there a moment ago...which he almost couldn't even remember now...

"Holy crap." Trip said, staring over at her in amazement now. "How do you get anything done with stuff like that all over the place?"

He got the eyebrow again.

"Discipline." She said.

Because, duh, obviously. So, right. Of course. That had probably been a pretty Human sort of thing to say.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, he got his mind truly blown.

He caught a quick, very clear impression...

She thought he was brilliant.

Very intelligent, amazingly insightful, capable of leaps of intuition and understanding that flatly astounded her...

He gawked at that, because it was more intense even than the sunset thing. And it sure didn't fit what he thought of himself. Maybe he was smarter than average in a lot of ways but he never seriously thought of himself like that.

She glanced over, sensing his reaction. Then did a full double take when she realized what he'd sensed. And her humor flowed through him then, as she laughed outrageously...if entirely internally...at how that had astounded him.

So while she laughed, deep down inside, at what a silly Human he was...he put his thinking cap on. Let some of that insight go to work.

She'd just affirmed that about him, so of course he had to now.

And he immediately sensed something that some deep part of him had already realized and had decided needed to be dealt with. Something it already knew precisely how to deal with. Long before any other conscious part of him did.

T'Pol was afraid.

Absolutely terrified.

She wanted to bond with him, recognized the logic of it, had fully accepted that and internalized it...

But it scared the hell out of her. Because she didn't believe that she could. She was afraid that she would fail. That she wasn't capable of bonding, to him or anyone else.

That she'd be alone for the rest of her life because of that.

A very large, very deeply suppressed part of her was convinced this situation would end with her being forced to confront the fact that she could never bond.

And why? What was it that was provoking this particular, deep seated fear right now?

The fact that he was rooting around in her emotions and perceptions at the moment. That he was inside her heart and her mind...and how that was nothing compared to what she would have to allow for that final phase coming up...

She couldn't do it.

He could see that already, even if she stubbornly refused to fully recognize it herself. She didn't want to recognize it because the whole thing was entirely logical, and so therefore she should be able to do it. Because she was Vulcan and it was logical. Therefore she could and she would.

But she couldn't.

She wouldn't be able to touch his katra. Or, more the point, allow him to touch hers.

She just flat couldn't do it.

Trip saw that, understood exactly what the problem was and knew intuitively what to do about it.

So he did.

"Okay," He said, confidently. "You're probably getting tired of doing this every time we try to drive somewhere, but...pull over for a minute. I want to show you something."