Note: Sekirei belongs to Sakurako Gokurakuin and the only thing I own here is my OC.
"This wasn't the best idea!" I called to Kara as my blades knocked bullets out of the air, protecting Elizabeth who was firing at the CIA Operatives around us with a rifle that looked straight out of a sci-fi movie.
"It's fine!" Kara called out as she dashed all over the place, slaying one man after another, their Kevlar armour doing absolutely nothing against her blade. "We always go through the front door!"
"Watch out!" Uzume grabbed Chiho who cowered behind her and jumped away, a rocket whistling by to smash into the wall several meters further, smashing it into rubble and shaking the whole building. "What the hell!?"
"Hi, this is Haihane," Haihane's voice, overlaid with whistling of the wind and explosions called out of my armour. "They got jets here, dodging them is getting rather annoying."
Just as her call ended, a gigantic tremor shook the whole complex, unbalancing pretty much all operatives who had to stop firing at us to remain aright. Looks like Beni just smashed something to bits out there. I dashed over taking advantage of the lull in gunfire, leaving Elizabeth as she dashed for cover behind a pillar. As I slashed at the nearest operative who only had time to look at me with fearful eyes, Haihane came up again.
"Okay, never mind, Beni took care of the air." She remarked casually, her voice much clearer this time. "Apparently they can't dodge house sized boulders turned into shrapnel thrown at them."
"Oi! It wasn't a house," Beni's voice came much quieter through Haihane's radio. "I just shattered a couple boulders. Anyway, outside looks secure for now, how's it going inside?"
"Still clearing the main hall." I replied, ignoring a man's death scream as he almost managed to dodge my blow, much to his misfortune. These men were pretty good but still too slow to actually dodge my swings. The most I saw was almost dodging like this guy here and instead of being cloven in 2 I merely slice open their chests or stomachs and leave them to die in agony. I was also surprised by the amount of female operatives, they were few of course, but much more than I usually encountered on my missions.
"Clear." Kara called over from her side as she walked leisurely in open, a gigantic pool of blood slowly spreading behind her. "You're still cleaning up? Must be getting rusty Rei."
"I am done." I replied as I wrenched my sword out of the chest of a young woman who looked like she was one of the intelligence agents, not even armoured just carrying a pistol. The woman coughed and took a last breath, her heart twitched a bit, clear in the open now and then stopped. "How's Chiho?"
"Terrible." Uzume replied, her hand tracing circles on the heaving girl. I closed my eyes and sighed. Of course, we've all faced this before. Thankfully, this won't be like with Beni or Haihane where we also had to help them deal with them doing the killing, but it won't be easy nonetheless. I could feel the distress through my bond, causing my heart to clench painfully. Kara also had a grimace pass through her face as she absentmindedly raised her empty hand to her chest and rubbed it.
"Fuck, this is stupid." I swore softly as I and Kara walked over to the pair. Elizabeth was behind us talking to herself softly as she created a holographic map of the place before her. "We should have foreseen this, hell; I had to deal with the exact same thing with Beni."
"It was a long time ago." Kara agreed with me, a slight grimace still on her face, her hand still on her chest. "But we don't have time for this."
"Chiho." I knelt before the shivering girl who stared at me with big eyes. "We must press on, the mission must be done otherwise Haihane and Beni will be in danger."
She nodded, still shaking, and tried to get up but her legs just wouldn't hold her. I was rather surprised by how much strength of will she showed. I've seen plenty of men and women who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time just turn into mindless beasts, driven by nothing but instincts when in battle as devastating as this one.
"Just…stay here." I put my hands on her shoulders and lowered myself to have our faces at same level, eyes to eyes. "Uzume will protect you; Kara will be wandering about too. You can feel us, can't you?"
When she nodded a yes, still unable to speak I smiled.
"Just concentrate on this feeling and you will be able to tell where we are and our emotions." I watched her nod and concentrate, her shaking slowly stopping. Seeing her white face slowly begin regaining some color, I lowered myself closer and whispered. "Focus on me."
That feeling of the comfortable darkness in my Tama slowly began to spread and I understood that she was beginning to feel me. Good, now, let's see if this will snap her out of the unnecessary drama. Chiho opened her eyes and I could feel her confused feelings through the bond before a feeling of peace and love I channeled into her through our kiss began to settle in. I also tried to channel the feeling of the safe, comforting darkness but it wouldn't leave my Tama so I abandoned the notion.
"Now, why don't you give a good luck kiss to Kara and Uzume too?" I broke off and stood up, Chiho's confusion and reluctance to end the kiss clearly coming through the bond. "We are going."
"Good luck." Chiho finally whispered, her mental stability somewhat returning even if her emotional one was far from steady. I began to feel the guilt begin to eroding at it once more but Kara scooped up the girl who squeaked from surprise and passionately kissed all sense out of her.
"Now, that is a kiss." Uzume gave thumbs up in approval. I watched for a second, feeling as Chiho emotions ran rampant again, the passion of Kara's kiss devouring any self-deprecating thoughts she had. Well, looks like they'll handle it from here, time for me and Elizabeth to do our parts. The less we stay here, the better.
"Where to?" I asked as I walked over to Elizabeth who still had that 3D map before her.
"Straight down about 10 floors." She said offhandedly as she touched the hologram to scroll down. "Then we go through a corridor filled with security and traps for about a kilometer and then we should be in their Archives."
"That's rather far from here." I whistled softly as I looked at the long corridor that separated the Archive and the main facility. Strangely enough, the map seemed to keep on going deeper. "Hey, what's lower?"
"I don't know…" Elizabeth scrolled further and we looked with surprise at a metro station. "Huh…interesting, this must connect to other CIA facilities."
"How come you didn't know this prior?" I looked at her questioningly, Elizabeth didn't seem like the person to not study her information prior to using it.
"I just pulled this from the local data frame." She stared at the metro for a second and then canceled the thing. "Right, we should get going."
"Shouldn't we tell them to go to the metro station?" I asked. "So that once we finish with Archives we can immediately get going to their other facilities."
"I fear they might collapse the tunnels." Elizabeth stated as she pulled up the map again and poked at the junction slightly beyond the metro station at which the map ended. "That and if there is no lab in connection then we'd just lose time."
"I still say we do it." I argued even as we turned to face trio. "With Beni with us, it doesn't matter if they collapse it or not, she'll clear a path. As for the facility not being connected, I somehow think that the lab would be closer to the facility we chose rather than close to here."
"I see your point." Elizabeth nodded and we turned our eyes to the sight before us. "Uzume…again?"
"Hehe," The brown haired Sekirei in question laughed in embarrassment. "Just taking her mind off this."
"I can clearly see that her mind is anywhere but present." I replied dryly as I looked at bright red Chiho, arousal coming strong through the bond, as she stared at Uzume with misty eyes. "What did you do?"
"Erm…" Uzume scratched the back of her head, the nervous smile still on her face. "I'd rather not say here…"
"Right." Elizabeth drawled and rolled her eyes before pulling out a radio. "Rei and I are going in, approximately 15 floors down there is a metro station that is used the CIA to move between their facilities. Rei has convinced me that we should meet you all there as that will speed things up. So, while we are going for the Archive, you should smash your way down. Good luck."
"Roger that." Haihane replied.
"Oh good, just let me finish cleaning up here…" Kara's voice came in with a bunch of screams that were quickly cut off.
"On my way." Beni replied shortly, her voice bored. She must not have much to do out there once the vehicles ended for the defenders.
I think I mentioned it before but I love how I can go through things while in Spirit Realm. Elizabeth and I dashed through their gates and barricades without pause as we traveled downward. Elizabeth couldn't help but snicker at the faces of the defenders as we ran through them. We could occasionally hear a tremor as we descended. No doubt that was Beni, knocking their thick steel doors right off with the hinges.
Soon, even those tremors faced off as we were now nearly 40 meters below ground. Finally, we stopped at the Archive floor and walked through the final titanic vault door to appear in a brightly lit room that reminded me a bit of mage libraries from some of the anime Haihane showed us. Neither of us could suppress an exclamation of wonder at the scene.
The entrance led to a balcony overseeing the top of a gigantic hollow cavern and when I leaned over the edge I could see that it was roughly 6 to 7 meters high. The whole cavern was covered by rows upon rows of metal cabinets, ladders attached to them by wheels, allowing easy access.
"We might be here for a while Elizabeth." I whistled the sound echoing through the room. "Did these guys really do so many operations?"
"Not necessarily." Elizabeth answered as we descended down a spiraling staircase to the base of this cavern. "The Archives contain classified information of all sorts. Not just mission intel and reports but agent data, blackmail material, any shady deals done by the USA and all sorts of spy information. God I hope it's ordered somehow."
"What do you need?" An old man with sharp blue eyes met us at the base of the stairs. This must be the archivist.
"We are looking for the research facilities where anything related to Sekirei is studied." Elizabeth replied calmly as if the person before us wasn't an enemy.
"You'd have to be more specific." The man cupped his chin in thought. "I have received classified research data from over a dozen facilities that study the Sekirei. I have got a steady stream of document to be archived from 2 main places through."
"Please give us all the information about the research bases sorted by the amount of research data they send." Elizabeth continued this confusing conversation with the old man.
"Very well." The man nodded and then looked at us sharply. "For payment I want you to leave the Archives intact."
"We can do that if you destroy all research data on Sekirei." Seeing the man about to object Elizabeth pressed. "Just the research data and in return we will leave without doing anything else."
"This is…acceptable." The old man nodded.
"Wait, what the hell Elizabeth?" I turned to face both of them, my confusion hitting a critical point. "I thought we were here to destroy the CIA."
"No, our mission was to destroy the CIA headquarters and any research information they had on the Sekirei." Elizabeth explained calmly. "Minaka realizes that destroying the CIA is a bit much even if they are an annoying backstabbing pest. That's why we cannot destroy the CIA heart – the Archives."
"But we destroyed this Headquarters and killed everyone inside." I still didn't get it. "How is this different?"
"You may have dealt us a heavy blow." The old man suddenly spoke. "But so long as the Archive stands, we will rebuild and we will improve. All you done was set us back maybe 10 or so years."
"We are here to deliver a warning Rei." Elizabeth finished the explanation. "Not start a war."
"It will take me about an hour to grab everything you asked for." The man turned back to Elizabeth.
"We'll wait." She replied simply and sat in his chair, pulling out a data pad. I sighed and leaned against the wall, thinking on this ordeal.
For the next hour Elizabeth played around with her pad, the old man kept bringing stacks of paper stamped as 'Top Secret' and I mused about how all of my effort to date as part of the Disciplinary Squad was to keep the status quo Minaka arranged with the rest of the world. Say what we say about Minaka and his insanity but his genius cannot be questioned. To bend 2 races to his will and then use the whole world as his playground… Only an insane genius like Minaka would ever do that.
Even now, Minaka holds the entire world in the palm of his hand, twisting and poking at it as he sees fit and the world can do nothing but clench its teeth and try to ignore him. Truly, what a fascinating human he is, I can even understand what Kazehana saw in him. Perhaps, when I go back, it would be for the best to keep Minaka around. Keep a very short leash on him with Takami as his personal jailor but he is far too useful to be killed or put into a mental Asylum.
"This is everything." I came out of my thoughts of Minaka exploitation to see the old man put a final stack on his metal desk, the whole thing completely submerged beneath amount of paper. He then took out another small stapled stack out of his chest pocket and handed it to Elizabeth who stood up to take it. "This is the information you wanted."
"Excellent." Elizabeth glanced through the stabled stack and turned to the man. "Does this place have a sprinkler or a fire alarm?"
"No, but the file cabinets are fireproof."
In response, Elizabeth took out a lighter and threw it at the mountain of paper after igniting the thing. We all stared in silence at the bonfire, the smoke drifting upwards where it was sucked up by the ventilation.
"It comes without saying that if the information you gave us is wrong we'll be back, yes?" Elizabeth asked in a carefree tone even as she turned away.
"Of course." The man looked like she just insulted his intelligence and called him a dimwit. "You came here once, I have no doubt that you can do so again."
"The our task here is done." Elizabeth said after she shifted through the ash for a minute, looking for anything that survived the inferno. "Let's go Rei."