A/N Okay, look, a lot of these stories, including this one, will take place in the second dimension. Why? Because I really like writing the second dimension characters (especially the Firestorm Girls), as it lets me go a bit more serious and dramatic with the characters and story. This is good for me because I like writing drama, and good for you guys because drama is the genre I'm best at writing. So, without further ado...
Miss Missing You (Fall Out Boy)
"Gretchen, report." Isabella's voice called across the quiet rooftop. She was anxious but dared not show it.
"Nothing yet, sir," Gretchen replied, still gazing through the binoculars.
"So what, are we just gonna stay up here all day? When can we go back to base?" Adyson was anxious as well, but for a much different reason.
A voice came through everyone's earbuds. "When you find something." Ginger answered, slouching down into her office chair. Ginger had volunteered to stay at the base. Normally Isabella was against letting a troop member skip out on missions, but she decided Ginger's extreme fear of heights would hurt this particular mission more than the extra soldier would help it.
"Yeah, more like if we find something." Adyson was growing bored, a dangerous emotion for a soldier who was supposed to be on high alert. "How do we even know that intel's legit?"
"We don't," Milly spoke up, standing up and moving to Gretchen's side. "That's why we're here. To see if it is."
The Firestorm Girls had spent the whole morning and most of the afternoon watching the now destroyed business park on the north side of town after their leader received an anonymous tip that Doof was moving something big, and was planning to set it up there. They'd been up there for hours, yet, so far, they'd seen nothing.
"Remind me again: where did we get this intel?" Nobody replied, knowing that the answer would only make Adyson's complaining worse. Adyson looked around at the team, who were all continuing their duties without paying attention to her. "Well?"
Finally, Ginger spoke up. "It... It was an anonymous tip."
"Oh, well, that's not suspicious."
"Look," Isabella started. "We checked. It didn't come from Doof. Or his goons. Now, nothing we can do will make this go any quicker. So stop complaining."
Isabella was one of maybe three people on Earth who could shut Adyson up, and both of them knew it. Adyson let out a "humph" and moved to a corner of the roof, taking a seat on the short stone railing.
With Adyson quiet, the roof became silent. Holly and Gretchen continued watching the plaza, one with binoculars, one without. The tip they had received didn't specify what it was that their dictatorial enemy was bringing, simply that it was important; for the resistance, that was enough.
The team's mission was to identify the object and leave, nothing more. "Just recon" was the phrase the commander had emphasized during the mission briefing, mostly by saying it dozens of times in every sentence.
A six-person recon team was rare, but Isabella wanted to bring everyone. When questioned about it, she simply answered. "More and more, missions that start out as 'just recon' don't stay that way."
Some would call it preparedness. Other's would call it paranoia. Either way, Isabella got her way, and five other soldiers were now accompanying her on a quiet rooftop, waiting for something that might never come.
Adyson continued her self-issued time-out on the corner of the roof, passing the time by toying with her weaponized slingshot, wishing that someone, something, would break the silence.
And with a look of surprise and worry, she looked up, as her wish was granted.
"Hold on. I got something." Holly's voice shattered the silence, and the entire team crawled their way towards the front of the roof, keeping low to avoid being seen. "By the red building."
Gretchen slowly shuffled her prone body so that she could get a better look at the red building on the left side of the plaza. However, she only took a quick glance before lowering her binoculars, as one didn't need them to see what was advancing through the street next to the building. A legion of Normbots was hovering through the empty street, lead by the dictator himself.
The Normbots stopped just outside of one of the building opposite of the one currently inhabited by the recon team. The sounds of the robots' motors harmonized and blasted against the quiet plaza.
"There must be dozens," Katie remarked.
"What is it? What's going on?" Ginger rose up in her seat, suddenly on alert.
"See for yourself," replied Isabella, pressing a button on her headset. Back at base, a black monitor suddenly flipped on, showing exactly what the team leader was seeing. Ginger watched in speechlessness, though only for a second.
"Holy cow."
The team looked on at what seemed to be a menacing show of force to nobody. Not a single soldier knew what was happening. They each kept an eye out for the mystery object that was supposed to be accompanying the small army, but nothing came.
Isabella reassured the group. "Remember, they don't know we're here. Gretchen, you have the binoculars. Get a better look."
Gretchen did as she was told, though, as she raised the lenses to her eyes, she wondered for what was she was meant to be looking out. The Normbots acted like they always had like they were always programmed to, so she figured that if something interesting was going to happen, it wouldn't be them that would set it off. Rather, she decided that the leader of the bots would be the one doing anything interesting, so she focused on him. She followed him with her pupils as he moved from leading the march to standing perpendicular to the lines death machines, as though he was going to give them a pep talk.
The rest of the team sat quietly on the rooftop, staring at the robots as they slowly turned their hovering bodies so that they were always facing their master.
Gretchen watched and listened carefully, expecting the dictator to yell out some kind of order. However, no sound came. Rather, he raised his right arm, his index finger pointing to the sky. Gretchen furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, following the finger with her pupil as his body rotated. Once it got close to the finger got close to pointing at its final target, Gretchen's eyes opened wide.
In a tone that was equal parts forceful and fearful, she gave a single command: "Run."
"Is he pointing at-"
She almost dropped the binoculars and she moved her body and repeated her directive. "RUN!" The group followed her movements, shooting up from their prone positions as the robot army took aim. Lasers shot toward them, either shooting over their heads or hitting the front of the building they were atop. "Get to the stairs!"
"What's going on!" Ginger tried asked through their ears, but a sharp, loud screeching tone forced her to remove her headset. That, combined with the now static filled monitor, notified her that her communications had been jammed. She threw the headset on the ground in a fit of fast-burning anger. "Crap."
The barrage continued as the recon team moved into the roof entrance and down the stairs, dodging rubble as it fell from the ceiling. Through passing windows, the troop watched part of the army break of and advance towards the building. "They'll be waiting for us in the lobby!" Adyson pointed out, drawing her weapon.
"We'll deal with it. Just keep going!" Isabella commanded as the already battered building continued to crumble all around them.
They reached the first-floor lobby of the ruined office building, and as expected, were met with a small section of the robot army. "Behind the desk!" They moved to the secretary's station, lasers barely missing most of the soldiers.
Most.
Milly was forced to the ground as the laser hit her shoulder, not so much taking cover behind the desk as tripping behind it. She skidded for an inch across the dust-covered floor. "Hit!" She yelled out, prompting Katie to unpack her medkit.
The large, arched desk provided perfect cover to the team. While Katie tended to Milly's burning shoulder, the rest of the group took Adyson's example, drawing their modified slingshots and loading them with explosive pellets.
They waited for a chance to rise from their cover and take a shot but continued laser fire gave no such opportunity. They simply waited, hiding behind the desk as it, too, began to crumble. Fed up, Adyson moved towards the edge of the desk, away from the lasers, and, with a cry of "Screw this!", rose up and fired.
It didn't take long for one of the Normbots to notice their now fallen comrade. They ceased fire and turned to take aim. Adyson, struggling under pressure to load another pellet stood in the open, inadvertently staying above cover. Taking the cease-fire as a chance to fire their pellets, Gretchen and the others rose up, noticing what Adyson did not. Diving for her teammate, Gretchen tackled Adyson to the ground behind a stone pillar. As she hit the concrete, the pain from the impact became masked by the pain from a shard of glass cutting through Gretchen's eyebrow. Blood fell down her face like a stream of red tears, and Gretchen opened her eyes to see a now blurry Adyson.
"Your glasses." Adyson pointed out.
"It's fine."
The others fired their projectiles. While most hit their targets, one was off, hitting the wall behind the enemies and exploding. As Adyson noticed the rather large hole created by the pellet, an idea appeared in her head. "Fire at the wall!" She yelled to the rest of the team over the laser fire and incomprehensible gibberish coming from the Normbots. The squad looked behind them at the stone wall, already rattled with holes. "It'll create a hole. That's our way out!"
"With that kind of force, the whole building will drop on us!" Holly yelled back.
"You got a better idea?"
Before Holly could answer, Isabella loaded a pellet in her weapon and aimed at the wall. "On my mark!" She waited for the rest of the team to load their projectiles before giving her order. "Fire!"
The room filled with dust and smoke. Most of the back wall was gone, leaving a large hole. The laser fire continued, and as predicted, the building began to crumble down, parts of the second floor dropping like boulders.
For the third time that day, Gretchen gave the order. "Run for it!"
Keeping low to avoid fire, they exited through the hole as the building began collapsing. Panicked cries of nonsense could be heard as the Normbots struggled to exit the building.
The entire building fell into a large heap of stone, wood, and drywall as a wave of dust rippled from the remains.
–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–|–
The dust from the collapsing building acted as cover as the Firestorm Girls retreated from the ruined plaza. Scattered, the team attempted to navigate the fog of dust to their emergency rendezvous. Once they got clear of the Normbots and dust, they regrouped.
"Okay, what the hell?" Adyson exclaimed between exhausted breaths. "That was supposed to be easy recon."
"We got ambushed," Gretchen replied, removing her shattered glasses and throwing them away on the ground. "They must've known we were coming."
The girls became silent for a single second before drawing their slingshots, the same thought on everyone's mind. "We were sold out." Katie was the first to speak her mind aloud. "We were sold out. One of us is a traitor." Accusing eyes were on everyone's faces as they attempted to figure out who could do such a horrible thing.
Adyson became the second to talk, furrowing her eyes and aiming for Gretchen. "It was you." As Adyson said this, all eyes turned to face the half-blind Gretchen. Gretchen stood her ground and returned the glare, ready to face Adyson's accusation. "You were jealous of Isabella. Jealous that she was the leader, while you were just the second in command, forced to take her orders. You wanted her gone so that you could become the leader."
Gretchen furrowed her eyebrows. "Or maybe it was you, Adyson. You were never happy being part of a team. You were always going off on your own; ready to face the entire legion of Normbots alone, even if it meant putting the rest of us in danger. You never cared about us."
Milly joined in the accusations, turning her eyes and slingshot in Katie's direction. "I think it's Katie. Always unappreciated, never getting to be part of the action. The medic. How ironic, the one who's supposed to save our lives is the one who intended to end them."
"Milly how dare you. I saved you. I healed your wounds. You wouldn't be alive if it weren't for me." While the arguing continued, Holly scanned the group and noticed something.
"Guys…" she attempted to get the attention of the group, but she went unheard over the accusations. "Guys!" Still nothing. "GUYS!" She finally screamed out. Everyone stopped and looked at Holly, keeping their weapons pointed in each other's directions. With the group's eyes fixed on her, Holly asked her troop members one question. One question that changed the group, and the war, forever.
"Where's Isabella?"