""Ow!"
"Move over!"
"You move over, you're bigger than me!"
This line of hushed whispering argument had been going on for the past couple of hours in the pitch black darkness of the suffocatingly claustrophobic box that Frenda and Ruiko currently found themselves in. Stage One of their genius plan.
"This was a dumb idea." Frenda hissed at Ruiko whom she was pressed up against at the moment.
"Your face is a dumb idea." Ruiko defensively shot back, huffing.
"Oh, such wit."
Finally, after what felt like eternity, the small enclosed space they were in stopped moving and shifting around, coming to a full stop with a heavy thud. Minutes passed as they waited in darkness, listening.
"I think the coast is clear." Ruiko hissed out, prompting Frenda to squirm around in her lap and start kicking at the roof of their tiny prison. All the shifting around and moving however, was suddenly rewarded with a sense of freefall that gave both a minor panic attack...
"OH SHI-"
"OH FUC-"
...before a heavy crash popped the box open and the pair spilled out.
And so, they were rewarded with light finally. Both were lying on the ground, Frenda on top of Ruiko, still halfway inside of the metal crate they had used to smuggle themselves in. A quick glance told them they were in a storage room, and their crate had been stacked on top of several other boxes, with all their squirming and kicking having knocked it off and onto the ground with a painful crash.
"Ow ow ow…" Ruiko hissed, sitting up and rubbing her lower back. "Not a word." she cut off Frenda's oncoming snark, Frenda snapping her mouth shut with a huff as she stood up, dusting herself off.
Grumpily, Ruiko stomped over to the marked second crate they'd used to stow their gear for the ride into the facility. Popping it open, she pulled out her duffel bag and began checking to make sure everything made the transit in working order.
Fishing out a pair of earpieces, sticking one in her ear and tossing the other to Frenda, who caught it and put it in her own ear. Both tapped the side of it to turn it on, and were rewarded with a loud screech.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW!?"
Both winced in pain as the familiar voice of Misaki shouted over the comms, sounding none too pleased.
"H-hey, Misaki-sama…" Ruiko started, earning her a growl from the other end.
"Don't 'sama' me and think that will spare you my irritation!" she responded sharply. "I told you two to wait until I found a safe way to get you into the facility, there were no active cameras inside for Haru-chan to hack to scout it out, but no, you had to-"
"As fun as this scolding is likely to be, we just made a racket in a storage room and really need to get a move on before we're made standing around." Frenda cut in, very disinterested in being lectured.
"Fine. Haru-Chan, please keep an eye on them. I give this twenty minutes at most before it goes completely off the rails." Misaki said on the other end of the comms, her voice getting more distant as she seemed to move away from the microphone.
"S-sure!" Was Uiharu's slightly flustered response over the comms.
"Right then." Ruiko forced a smile, laughing nervously. "Shall we?"
"So, Uiharu, you know how the data you spent that time going over from those last hard drives said this was an old facility for autonomous drone creation that we suspected that giant death machine came from? You know, the one that tried to kill us last time?" Ruiko asked, her back pressed up against some criss-crossed I-beams high up on a maintenance walkway.
"Yeah?" Uiharu asked, her tone both curious and confused.
"And you know how the records you dug up said that this facility was now used for storage for the city, and that Indigo abandoned it so it was just an empty husk now?" Frenda asked, also pressed up against the metal supports opposite of Ruiko.
"Y-yeah?" Uiharu asked, her tone growing more nervous.
"IT'S NOT." Both hissed, peeking back around the edges of their cover down to the depot floor below that was covered in rows and rows of walker-tanks, spider drones, and patrolling soldiers. Very well-armed soldiers.
"O-oh." Uiharu responded, a pause. "Oh, no… G-get out of there!"
"Yyyyeah, about that…" Ruiko drawled, laughing lightly, rubbing the back of her head. "We… don't know the way out. We came in a crate."
There was an awkward pause, before a distant annoyed voice on the comms could be heard saying "Nineteen minutes, thirty-seven seconds. Must you only meet my expectations when I don't want you to?"
"O-OK, new plan! Find a computer terminal attached to their main network and plug one of my long-range wireless connectors into it. I'll get you a way out, j-just don't get caught!"
"Right." Ruiko said, before looking over the edge of the walkway again. "...Easier said than done."
Crouching down low, the pair of intruders did their best to remain out of sight as they crossed the walkway over the factory floor, pushed a heavy metal door open when they got to the end, and slid into the hall just beyond it. Rows of pipes and cabling greeted them, showcasing the factory's guts as they moved away from sight.
"Ruiko." Frenda grabbed her partner's shoulder, prompting the much taller girl to turn around and look at her, blinking in surprise as Frenda proffered a handgun- an old M1911 that Frenda had picked specifically for Ruiko, but very much did not intend to give her today. A horde of mercenaries somewhat disrupted that plan.
"Wha-" Ruiko cut off upon seeing Frenda's intense expression.
"Ruiko. Those men down there? They will shoot you on sight. They will kill you without a moment's hesitation." Frenda pushed the pistol forward again, prompting Ruiko to nervously take it.
"But…" Ruiko blinked, looking up from the killing tool in her hand to Frenda.
"Just remember what I taught you. Focus on riding the adrenaline high, the rush it gives you. It's how I taught myself to get past the mental blocks of killing." Frenda said evenly, the cold topic visibly making Ruiko shift with discomfort. "If you don't kill them first, they will kill you."
Ruiko nodded gravely, checked the chamber and safety, and stuffed it in her waistband before turning and continuing down the hall.
Frenda stared at the back of her partner, her expression twisted into one of concern. With a shake of her head, she put her gameface back on, and followed.
Sneaking through the facility was perhaps best characterized as soul-grinding tension punctuated by the occasional horror show. They kept to the maintenance hallways, mercifully empty, but occasionally peeked down through the grated flooring or the odd vent grate.
"We must have passed half a dozen hangars already." Frenda said with a sort of shocked marvel. "He's got to have hundreds of those things. Where the fuck does he get the money for this?"
"And why does he need them? What is he planning? And who are these mercenaries?" Ruiko asked, looking at Frenda, before glancing back down the grated floor they were above, a few stories above the latest hanger.
"...That sight alone is providing me with answers. That kind of money, even dark money, can't be hidden forever. There aren't that many people who can throw that kind of wealth around and it always leaves a trail." Misaki's voice said over their comms. "Just focus on escaping."
The pair nodded as they continued along their way, pausing at an intersection.
"Straight, or to the left?" Frenda hummed in thought. Ruiko didn't respond right away, frowning as she seemed lost in thought. "Left probably goes deeper in to the facility… Might want to keep skirting the edges." She glanced at Ruiko questioningly when she didn't receive an immediate reply.
"Hey, Frenda… what if this place has all those things for more than just production?" She asked after Frenda stared at her for several seconds with a questioning look.
"What do you mean?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. She felt like she knew where this might be going.
"...What if this place is protecting something?"
Frenda looked into Ruiko's eyes, and it was returned with a mixture of worry and curiosity.
"...So left then?" Frenda asked, smirking.
"Left!"
The pair walked in relative silence, tuning out Misaki and Uiharu talking on the other end of their comms, to stay focused on not making too much noise. Frenda lead the way, seeming exceedingly on-edge. As they hit the end of the long hallway they'd been following, a solitary door waited. Frenda held up her hand and carefully approached it. Cracking it open, she peeked outside, froze, and very quietly closed it.
"Well, that is a lot of guns with likely-unfriendly people- Oh, who am I kidding, they'll skullfuck us with those before pulling the trigger." Frenda muttered as she crept backwards, looking to Ruiko who looked thoughtful.
"Was… was that mental image really necessary?" Ruiko asked, looking mildly disturbed.
"Yes."
Grumbling, Ruiko looked around the immediate area, her eyes eventually falling down on the floor, her eyes lighting up as she spotted something just a few meters back the way they had come.
"What about down there?" Ruiko pointed at one of the grates on the floor. Below them was a very dark room only illuminated by dim lights built into the floor outlining pathways. "It looks like that room's empty right now…" Ruiko noted.
Frenda hummed in thought, before looking pointedly at the door she'd been peeking out of a moment ago. "Not like we have a ton of other options." On that cheery note, both girls moved to grab at the grate, heaving to lift it up and slide it partially out of the way. It was certainly not light, but mercifully not welded in, likely for maintenance purposes.
Slipping out, they carefully lowered themselves onto a walkway not unlike one they'd walked across earlier. Pulling out flashlights, they looked around to see what was inside, nearly twenty feet above the floor. Their searching rewarded them with the sight of rows and rows of both autonomous walker drones and powered suits.
"I reiterate: what in the ever-loving fuck could he possibly need all this equipment for? There's no way the Board would sit on their asses if they knew about this." Frenda said with a mixture of awe and horror.
"Just one of the reasons we were planning to investigate this place." Misaki's voice chimed in over the comms. "Take pictures if you can do it safely. Everything might help." Misaki said, though there was the sound of a displeased Uiharu nearby- fretting honestly. "They'll be fine, if the room is empty. It's unlikely there would be security in a hanger that far into the facility."
Ruiko and Frenda nodded as they made their way down to the floor, finding a ladder attached to the walkway not too far away. Frenda pulled a pair of cameras from Ruiko's pack and they set about taking pictures of the giant death machines.
Frenda felt the spike of doubt and depression creeping into her mind as she got out of direct eyesight of Ruiko. It was suddenly like being back on one of her ITEM missions. And recently… anything regarding ITEM sparked seeds of doubt, self-hate, and-
"What the-?" Frenda's self-pitying thoughts came to a halt as she hit the end of the depot, spotting a half-hexagon tower that reached from the floor to the ceiling. A quick look told her it was likely an armor-reinforced storage container for... something. The small panels to the sides of each of them showed that they didn't want anyone accessing them without access codes, apparently. Her flashlight began to strafe along them, looking at words painted into the panels.
"Five_Over Modelcase… "Railgun"?" She muttered as she read one, her gaze moving to each. She noted… there was seven such containers. She continued to move along, reading each.
"Five_Over Modelcase_"Meltdowner"… Five_Over Modelcase_"Mental Out"… Five_Over Modelcase_"Matrio-" She broke her focus as a sound caught her attention, spinning around and moving her flashlight to see that Ruiko was wincing at the sound she'd accidentally made while searching one of the Powered Suits- accidentally knocking a ladder over that was next to the suit.
"Fucking for real, Ruiko!?" Frenda hissed angrily, Ruiko herself looking slightly panicked at having made the noise, the sounds of footsteps being heard off in the distance- too close for comfort.
Frenda dashed over to the knocked-over ladder and quickly put it back up, turning back to Ruiko who was hastily stuffing something in her bag. Frenda didn't have the time or focus to worry about what, just impatiently shoving at Ruiko to start moving. The pair dashed for the maintenance ladder, running across the walkway as fast as they could to the other end, both hoping silently that the next maintenance hallway would lead them somewhere that didn't include a horde of guards or...
"A dead end." Ruiko sighed as the hallway they'd run down finally terminated with a nondescript concrete wall with no obvious way out other than back the way they came. Every single exit they found seemed to have a kicked beehive only with soldiers and automatic weapons on the other side.
"My turn." Frenda grinned, walking up to the metal wall and pressing her ear against it, lightly tapping it. "Hmmm…"
"Uh… what are you doing?" Ruiko asked with a raised eyebrow, as Frenda pulled away and began to run a line of tape along the wall, forming a large rectangle.
"This." She pulled out a sharp, pointed device and stabbed at the tape, which immediately burst into light and seared a line along the wall. Reaching up and pressing a hand-held circular magnet, she pressed it against the wall, pressing a button to activate it, and then grunted loudly as she began to pull. Ruiko, mercifully, rushed forward just as that section of the wall gave out, helping her lower it down to the ground without it crushing Frenda.
"What… was that?" Ruiko asked as they wiped sweat from their brows, Frenda looking very pleased.
"Special little invention of mine. Shaped nanothermite cutting tape. Touch it off and it sears right through most metal sheets." She grinned, before turning toward the rectangular hole she'd just made in the wall. Both girls peeked through it, and just as Frenda had estimated when she tapped the wall, there was an opening on the other side.
It was yet another large, very dark room, only the small amount of illumination came from glowing tanks of liquid this time.
"The hell?" Frenda muttered as she pulled out a flashlight, carefully dropping down to the floor. "Tch, that's too high to get the plate back in place, too." Ruiko followed shortly after, pulling out a flashlight of her own as they began to investigate.
"Hey, how's progress guys? You find a computer yet?" Uiharu's voice came over the comms at last, sounding excessively worried by their silence.
"Huh? Oh, y-yeah, we found our way into… a lab of some sort, I think. There's gotta be one in here somewhere, right? Ah,there!" Ruiko quietly ran over to the nearby terminal as Frenda continued to poke around with her flashlight.
"Shit, that maintenance tunnel must have been on a downward grade. Goddamn, can't believe I missed that there was a slope... Anyway, hear that?" Frenda asked, pointing her flashlight up at the ceiling. Ruiko paused in her search for an input on the terminal, and listened, hearing the distant pounding of something heavy. She nodded. "That's the sound of walkers moving about. There must be a hangar above us." Frenda concluded, Ruiko humming in thought in response. Looking back to the computer, flashlight in her mouth to help her move about, she plugged in the wireless receiver she had.
"Gaht iht." She said through the flashlight over the comm to Uiharu, who she heard typing rather quickly as she broke into the terminal.
Frenda, meanwhile, looked over the various pieces of lab equipment, pausing at a row of liquid-filled tanks.
"Huh… one of the tanks here is missing. They must have moved whatever was in it…" Frenda muttered aloud as she noticed a gap in the row of tanks. Leaning forward toward the monitor attached to the now-vacant holder of the tank, she hummed as she read the name on it.
"FT-01… Weird." Frenda mused, before moving onto the next tank, which had another name, or- more accurately- designation, on it. "A-02? Not exactly throwing details on this are they?"
"Frenda, put on a camera monocle. I need to see what you're seeing." Misaki's voice spoke up over the comm, prompting Frenda to jump slightly.
"What? Why?" Frenda asked, prompting an annoyed sound on the other end.
"Just do it." Misaki huffed in irritation, earning an equally annoyed growl from Frenda.
"Yes, Your Majesty." Frenda snarked as she put one of those monocles on, attaching it to the ear-comm. Frenda didn't question how Uiharu or Misaki had gotten their hands on what she was fairly certain was military issue equipment.
Over by the computer, Ruiko watched the screen as Uiharu worked her magic, bashing through any security it might have had to search for what she needed.
"OK! I have a map and… how did you guys get even DEEPER into the facility?" Uiharu asked with an exasperated tone.
"...Luck?" Ruiko said in a completely unconvincing tone, grinning cheekily to herself. Uiharu groaned on the other end, before continuing.
"Saten-san, you really, really enjoy making my life harder…" She groaned out, the screen coming to life as Uiharu began to plot an exit out of the facility for them, the map appearing in front of Ruiko's sight.
Over back by the tanks, Frenda turned her head to get the scene into sight, Misaki at first quiet as she watched from the camera.
"That's… that's cloning equipment." Misaki said in a hushed whisper. Frenda froze for a moment, not responding, just listening to the tone of seriousness in Misaki's words.
"...There's ten tanks here." Frenda said quietly. "Do you think… that there were clones in them?"
"Move over to the desk, see if there are any records." Misaki instructed, Frenda bristling under the orders, but doing it anyway, starting to sort through the various piled up items on the desk.
Over by the computer, Ruiko continued staring into the monitor looking slightly bored.
The screen suddenly clearing drew Ruiko's eye and her boredom was banished as she saw what appeared.
This is _Depot (Diagrammix qrisc_68k 0.23.7) 22:19:09
c5labs login: indigo
Password:
Last login: from fd08:f582:32f8:48d9:8400:3ece:524b:e98c on pts/49
indigo c5labs ~ $
Ruiko's eyes went wide as she read those haunting words. "U-um… Uiharu?" She said nervously.
"Oh no." Uiharu said in a horrified whisper. "You're… you're in HIS LAB! He's in the building! You need to leave, now!"
"We're in whose lab!?" Frenda ran up to join them, holding an armful of documents and tablets, starting to shove them into Ruiko's bag without asking, looking slightly frantic. What had she found over there?
"That lunatic's! We need to le-" Her words were cut short as a buzzing was heard, signaling the stop of an elevator on their level. Both of them spun to look at a pair of automatic double doors, a red light above it turning green. Both leaped down and hid behind a lab table, pressing up against it just as the doors opened. Footsteps echoed throughout the cavernous room.
Frenda and Ruiko looked at each other, both their eyes containing flickers of fear. Their comms were silent, as if Misaki and Uiharu dared not speak a word that might even have the chance to give them away.
"...Was someone in here?" hissed the man who could only be Indigo from across the room, standing right near where Frenda had been rifling through documents. Both of them felt their hearts freeze. Ruiko felt Frenda tug on her arm and start to crawl on the floor toward the door he had just come through. Ruiko followed, doing her best to remain silent as they slid along the floor. They listened to his footsteps as he began to move around the edge of the room. They turned a corner and hid behind one end of the table just as a slight movement told them he'd reached the terminal they'd had Uiharu hack into.
"What's this?" The voice muttered, and there was a sound of something getting pulled out of- OH NO THE TRANSCEIVER.
"Who was… What.. the fuck?" The voice hissed, both Frenda and Ruiko not waiting to move toward the door faster, hoping he did not hear them. "Who- WHAT THE FUCK!?" the voice suddenly yelled, and Frenda realized what he saw. Namely the giant fuck-off hole she'd carved into the upper wall.
"Run." Frenda said just as they were just a few dozen feet from the door, pulling Ruiko up and running full sprint toward the door. Frenda chucked a grenade as they bolted, the pin on her finger as it flew through the air.
"Quick, while he's- FUCK!" Frenda cried out in surprise as they reached the door, the smoke grenade she'd just thrown coming back at her from the force of a thrown knife sticking it in mid-air and pinning it to the wall in the open hallway. It burst on impact, thick choking smoke flowing over them.
Both began to cough, stumbling through the haze. Experience guiding her, Frenda pulled Ruiko down and lead her toward the elevator in a crawl. She cursed some more as the distinct tink and thonk of knives hitting solid surfaces made it clear their billowing cloud was under a barrage of blades. One of them grazed the back of Ruiko's head, strands of hair falling onto the ground as some blood began to pour down her scalp from a deep cut, but she somehow managed to avoid crying out in pain and giving up their position.
Stumbling in a rushed panic, they collapsed into the elevator. Frenda jumped up and mashed the close button as fast as she could.
"WHO DO YOU THINK YOU'RE FUCKING WITH?! YOU'RE FUCKING DEAD!" Came the enraged rasp just as the doors finally closed. Dents appeared as he smashed into the metal. Frenda continued her button abuse on one that would take them up when a knife pierced through the door. Ruiko leaped up, grabbing a small bat out of her bag and smashing it against the knife, forcing it to pop out the other end. With a shudder, the elevator began to rise as the knife was removed.
"Are you two alive?!" The voices of Misaki and Uiharu cried in unison as they began to go up.
"B-barely." Ruiko panted out, drawing the handgun from her waist nervously, feeling like she might be needing it. Frenda did the same, one hand on her gun, and another drawing a small rocket-shaped hand-held device that Ruiko was fairly confident was an actual rocket based on prior experience with Frenda.
"I can't believe he was here. You need to get out, now." Misaki fretted, Frenda and Ruiko too jittery to even consider a snarky reply. They were both taking these precious few seconds to catch their breath after the smoke, clearing their throats as well as their heads.
The elevator dinged as it stopped at the next level, the doors opening.
"Intruders are in the ele-?" A guard said as he looked at the opening doors, one hand to his ear as he was clearly listening to instructions on the other end of his communication headset. There was an awkward, tense pause as the pair of intruders stared at the mercenary.
"FUCK!" He immediately grabbed at the rifle hanging around his shoulders, both Ruiko and Frenda acting on reflex, raising their guns up and pulling the trigger. There was just a few brief cracks and flashes of gunfire before the guard fell backward, unmoving. Frenda was panting just slightly from the surprise, but Ruiko, she could see the beginnings of a panic attack showing. That wasn't surprising. The girl had just shot someone. However...
They didn't have time for it. Frenda grabbed Ruiko's hand and quickly pulled her out of the elevator just as the doors began to close again, likely to go down and pick up the psychopath with the knives.
"Ruiko, focus! We don't have time for this, we're going to die if we don't focus!" Frenda yelled at her, pulling her down the hall and then quickly down another. Ruiko nodded shakily as she seemed to try to pull herself together, though her breathing was irregular and she barely kept pace with the much-shorter Frenda
The sound of a blaring alarm was completely unsurprising as it suddenly sprang to life.
"Yeah, that's fair." Frenda groaned at the alarm as it went off. Neither paused in their dead sprint, not wanting to be caught by Indigo who was undoubtedly searching for them now.
"Just follow my directions! There's a hanger elevator you can use to get out, it's normally used to raise the drones to the surface!" Uiharu said in a near-shout over the comms. Uiharu may have lost her direct connection, but she still had her maps she'd downloaded.
Weaving and twisting through halls, hiding behind pipes and in side rooms as guards scrambled around to figure out what was happening and finding the intruders, a thought did occur to Frenda.
"They… aren't just looking for us." She noted, frowning.
"Explain," Misaki ordered tersely as the pair continued their flight.
"They're all heading in a particular direction instead of using a search pattern. They're very sure they have a reason to go that way." A pause followed Frenda's explanation.
"Good, then. Makes it easier for you to get out of there." Neither Frenda nor Ruiko were interested in debating that topic.
A few hallways later found them in an empty hangar. It looked like people had all rushed off to deal with the current crisis, leaving it mercifully empty. A large metal gate was on one end of the room, with a transparent square tube leading up into the ceiling- the lift.
"Yes!" Ruiko cheered as they began to run toward it. Almost free!
"Let's get the fuck-" Frenda began, pausing as the gate began to open of its own accord. They both froze as the gate slid open with a metallic groan, and they saw the figure standing and patiently waiting for them.
"GET OUT OF THERE!" Misaki cried in alarm as she saw the figure from Frenda's monocle feed.
Standing and waiting was a woman in a skin-tight bodysuit, a steel mask fastened to her head and concealing her face. Small bits of armored plating adorned her figure, seemingly placed more to emphasise the indecency of the ensemble than to provide any sort of protection. Silver-white neck length hair was all that remained exposed in her fearful regalia.
"She was the one who attacked us on the highway, do not fight her! Just get out!" Uiharu reinforced Misaki's panic with her own. "How… How is she even alive after Sogiita-san punched her right in the head without holding back?" Uiharu whispered in horror, Frenda paling as she got a basis for what kind of horror was approaching them at a sedate pace.
"SHOOT HER!" Frenda yelled to Ruiko as she reached under her own skirt, Ruiko responding on reflex and raising her gun as Frenda pulled out a pair of hand propelled rockets in one hand, and another pair in the next.
Ruiko let off several shots, most going wide due to her shaking grip, but one-
Ruiko blinked and gasped in pain as she felt searing pain on her neck. Frenda glanced over and saw what was undoubtedly a bullet graze on the left side of Ruiko's throat, a bullet having just narrowly missed a lethal path through her carotid artery.
"W-who-?" Frenda didn't wait to finish that thought, throwing all four of the rockets at the calmly approaching figure, the missiles striking the ground and exploding in a cacophony of deafening noise and blinding light. After a pause to reorient themselves, both didn't wait and sprinted around the pillar of smoke where the girl had once stood.
"That should have at least stunned her-" Frenda began to say, the sentence cut off as a painful impact suddenly hit her. Frenda toppled onto the ground, rolling and sliding from both her sprint and the impact. A piece of metal, torn from the metal floor, had appeared out of nowhere it seemed, the chunk of heavy material having slammed right into Frenda's ribs with a sickening crunch.
Ruiko spun and saw, with unrestrained terror, as the figure walked out of the smoke completely unaffected.
"H-how?" Was all she could say, shaking and terrified. Who could survive just taking explosives right to the face without a scratch?
In a sudden burst of motion, the girl launched at her with immense speed and Ruiko just barely managed to dive out of the way of the outstretched hand. The hand touched the wall behind her, and Ruiko could only watch in shock as the wall literally crumpled into a crater as though it had been hit with a shot from Mikoto's Railgun.
"What… the fuck?" Frenda gasped out as she fought her way to her feet, the absolutely agonizing pain emanating from her ribs making every breath a struggle. The silent antagonist turned, throwing what had to be several hundred pounds of metal from the wall Frenda's way with all the urgency of a casual baseball toss. Frenda groaned in pain from slamming into the ground again to avoid the projectile.
The figure paused seeming...confused? What was wrong with her? In fact, everything she did came only after one of those odd pauses, as if she had to consider each action carefully.
"Ruiko! Quick! Run back the way we came, fuck this!" Frenda yelled as she flicked her skirt, a trio of grenades dropping out onto the ground. Frenda pulled her beret over her face and Ruiko thankfully saw what was happening just in time to shield her eyes- though not her ears.
A flashbang boomed through the room as the pair of smoke grenades poured out the black cloud. Ruiko stumbled around in pain, her ears ringing from the sound. She was stumbling toward the door, but suddenly felt a hand grab hers and pull her in the opposite direction.
Slammed into a wall, she blinked as she tried to reorient herself, struggling against the figure but too stunned to put up a good fight. That thing was going to kill her-
A squeeze on her rear told her, no, that was Frenda. She paused in her struggle, waiting, and as the smoke began to clear in the large room, realized she was pinned into a corner of the lift, pressed up against the box-shaped lift controls that stood attached to the platform. Frenda pressed herself closely against Ruiko, effectively in her lap, both of them squeezing their bodies to make as small a profile as they could to hide behind their flimsy cover. And waited. And waited.
Finally, the sound of an automatic door was heard opening and closing.
"Oh gods, she fell for it." Frenda said, looking like she was about to piss herself. She slammed her hand down on the lift controls, telling it to go up after a couple of minutes of waiting.
"N...nice... bluff..." Ruiko coughed out.
"Crazy strong and crazy crazy, but not too bright, I guess." Frenda gasped out as the lift began to rise up. Frenda's hat had a special material for keeping the smoke out of her lungs, but Ruiko had no such luck. They'd need to rectify that. Looking Ruiko up and down, she was a hot mess, blood on her throat from the graze, and a line of the red substance still pouring from the head wound she'd received from Indigo's knife. They hadn't really had time to treat it. Did they have time on this elevator?
"What… the fuck even was that?" Ruiko whispered as the lift rose toward the surface. Misaki had a helpful answer.
"Frankenstein's monster."