Well, we've gotten a SNOW DAY today down south! Which means no school which means it's 2:48 now and I've been a little loopy and incredibly lazy all day, so I'll go on and finish this NAOW.
I own nothing. No Yu-Gi-Oh!, Hellsing, Metropolis, or any pre-existing materials.
[Belagerung]
[Siege]
"Okay," The Romanorum said, turning in the passenger seat. "Francorum found out there are guard shifts. They're only in the primary chamber, they're essentially madmen with guns. Fakes programmed for nothing but killing. Dealt with easily enough, Kaiba should be able to shoot 'em down no problem. He'll go in first. I want Francorum to follow him in, help him with the guards if he needs it. Leda and Hiram, I want you two to work as a unit- that should be no problem for y'all. Langobardorum, you follow them in and I'll bring up the rear. Once we get past the initial guard, we'll blow the door. That'll be the job of the C4. Francorum'll tell you the rest," The Romanorum nodded at the Francorum, bowing her head and passing her a thin holo-plate.
The Francorum started it up, selecting files from a scroll-through map. It was a simple diagram- an entrance, door, and then a passageway leading both left and right, to two different complexes.
"This, right here," Began the Francorum, "Is what we'll see after the door'll be down. We go to the right, that'll lead us to the lab complex. It'll be divided up into different rooms- cultures, storage, tech, labs. We don't know how many of them are down there- Jonouchi didn't know, he only saw the lab complex. We've got no idea how far this goes or how big it is, this could turn out to be a re-run of Russians vs. Hitler's bunker. The plan is simple- three teams of two. Leda and Hiram, Romanorum and Langobardorum, Kaiba and me. We'll get certain amounts of explosives, put them all on synchronized timers-"
"We'll pass you guys out some communicators for that, but only use them for essential information and programming the charges," The Langobardorum cut in.
"Right. Well, we kill what we need to, program the charges, and get the hell out. We'll put charges in the building itself and bring it down over the complex. And that'll be that. We'll take care of Jonouchi and any residual needs after that."
"So that's our strategy," Kaiba asked, starting to smirk. "Go in, blow shit up, get out? Really?"
"You got a better idea on such short notice," Leda snapped at him. She was sitting in Hiram's lap, her head almost touching the celling of the car. She looked out the window when it had started to rain.
"No? Didn't think so."
Fat raindrops dived down from the clouds, combined with a stinging rain and chilling wind. It had grown dark outside, another day had passed. Orange ribbons of lights flashed past, thinning out or disappearing completely for stretches of road as they headed to the run-down districts of downtown.
"The building's over that way," The Romanorum said, pointing over to the right. "Street 32, block B, house 6. Park over in block A, though, that should give us plenty of space."
The Block A building was just a few streets down from where they were. It didn't take them but a second to get there. Reaching the building, Kaiba parked behind it, in the alley space between Block A and another building. Everyone was silent as they piled out of the car and started to walk down towards the building.
Block B, House six, although not all that tall- just three stories- loomed over them, blending in almost perfectly with the dark sky.
The Romanorum passed out guns and explosives, in the end leaving nothing for herself save her share of C4.
"Line up and let's go" Kaiba said, taking point.
The Francorum recited the code to open the door to Kaiba, who typed it into an ancient keypad. With a small pneumatic hiss and a beep, the door swung inwards. Show time.
Pulling out the two bayonets, Kaiba stepped hesitantly into the darkened hall in front of them. He could see it was slanted downwards slightly, turning off at a sharp angle to the right. He followed it, coming to a staircase. The Francorum stopped behind him, holding a hunting knife expertly.
"Go on down, I'll cover you. Everyone else needs to wait up here," She said, turning to check the group behind them.
"We'll call you on down after we check it out."
Leda nodded, eyes flitting around the corridor.
The stairwell seemed to go on a damned long time- fitting, actually. The door had to be a fair ways underground. Kaiba suspected they had walked down three or four floors before the stairs ended, opening up into a large foyer-like hall that stretched on, the door to the other complexes in the back of it. The hall seemed empty, but it couldn't be. He walked out first, talking back to the Francorum.
"Get everyone else down here," he said, grip tightening on the blade handles.
The Francorum obeyed, footsteps retreating into the background.
Up above him, a fake held onto the junction between the wall and celling, watching the man walking through the hall. He wasn't one of them. He had to be eliminated. Letting go of the place where its hands dug in, the fake dropped noiselessly behind him, crouching down to get him from behind, to sever his spine...
Kaiba turned, seeing the fake behind him. It looked surprised, disbelieving at the fact that it had been detected, before a bayonet blade buried itself in the fakes skull, splitting the head open when it was pulled out.
They had come out faster after that, Kaiba noticed. That one he had just killed had broken the metaphorical ice. A crowd of them swarmed around him, all grabbing hands and gnashing mouths and sharp teeth.
Gunshots felled three fakes, the spatter getting all over Kaiba and making him look to the stairwell. The Francorum was there, gun in hand, with Leda, Hiram, the Romanorum and Langobardorum fanning out to help eliminate the obstacle.
A fake dropped in front of him, not even opening its mouth before it was cut in half.
Kaiba barely noticed much of anything else as he fought the onslaught. It came naturally to him as he felt the blades make their way to pliant dead flesh.
The Romanorum used an ability he had never seen before, not even in Egypt- speak a word, and it happened. The words 'Nepalm', 'Electrocute', and 'Explode' were particularly helpful.
Leda cut up enemies as she normally did, Hiram splitting them into ribbons beside her. The Francorum disemboweled them with knives, and the Langobardorum broke bones and collapsed rib cages and skulls.
It didn't take long for them to walk through the rest of the hall, bloodied but not worse for wear, to the door.
The Romanorum took a large wad of explosives and divided it, placing them on different parts of the door and setting charges.
"Stand to the sides and plug your ears, kids, this'll get loud."
They did as they were told.
The door was, quite literally, blasted off it's damn hinges, clanging loudly to the floor and leaving a large, scorched hole in the wall.
"Pair up and let's move," Leda said, pulling out her gun before going into the revealed hallway, to the right. Seto and the Francorum followed, and the Romanorum and Langobardorum checked the hallway before stepping through.
The labs themselves were easy to get to- you just followed the hallway. Finding the rooms were a bit more problematic. They were all unlabeled- doors inset at irregular places along a hall. Take one and go with it, them.
So that's what Kaiba did. The first room was nothing, just typical storage for essentials. The second room was a little more lucky- A lab. The same lab as was in the picture that the Romanorum showed them all last time they met. The CAT scanner in one corner of the room, the lab tables and operating sets in another.
"How much C4 do we have," Kaiba asked, turning to The Francorum.
"About six pounds and three charges."
"Set one of them in here. Then we'll go see about another room."
A slab of C4 was set in the middle of the room. The Francorum radioed in to say that they set the timer on the charge for half an hour. More than enough time.
The next room was as useless at the first- a break room or something. Moving on.
The next room wasn't really a... room. A large tunnel was carved out of it going into the earth, another tunnel going up. Streams of holographically projected data zoomed along it, at the core was a data processor, suspended by connection cables from the celling. This looked important. They set a charge, again at half an hour, before moving to another room.
So far, things were oddly quiet. It was unnerving- nobody had stopped them, nobody had crossed their path, it was just... quiet. The next room they found helped explain the situation.
Inside of it, there were rows of large test tubes, lit in phosphourescent blue light, the test tubes filled with fakes. Either being grown, maintained, or improved, Kaiba didn't care. He pulled out his gun, taking careful aim before shooting the first row of them open. Fluid spilled onto the floor along with water-bloated corpses.
"Let's set a charge and get out of here," Kaiba said, radioing in with the rest of the group.
"We're all done here, where are you guys?"
"This is the Romanorum- We're good. We found a storage room full of cadavers and a lab. One guy was ina lab, a science-y type. We shot him, he's not getting on up. We don't know where Sadie, is, though, that's a problem."
"This is Leda over here. We've still got one room to check- maybe we should all get down here, Hiram and I've got a bad feeling about this last room. Let's all get down here and clear it out. Quickly."
"Got it. We'll be down there."
"I see you and Hiram- Lat's go on and get this over with. See you and the Francorum when y'all get down here. Over and out, I guess."
The line went dead.
"Leda and Hiram have one room to sweep through and then we'll go. We need to go down and sweep through it with them."
The Francorum nodded.
"Let's go."
The hallway wasn't to long- they reached the rest of the group in not to much time. Hiram stood next to the door, holding the knob to open it. Leda clicked the safety off on her gun, looking nervously towards the door. Everyone else followed suit, priming weapons and exchanging nervous looks. Kaiba remained indifferent.
Leda nodded and Hiram, pointing her gun as she ran into the room.
A woman with black hair stood stooped over a lab table, working on a cadaver. It's chest lay open, organs out.
"Did you get me the scalpels, Bertrand? I need the smallest caliber one to get into the veins and arteries without ruining them-"
Leda walked over silently behind the woman, holding the gun ot her head.
"...Who are you?"
"Are you Sadie Hawthorne?"
"Dr.; Dr. Sadie Hawthorne. Who are you?"
"I'm not important. Is it true that you were the previous Maglightum for the Paladin organization?"
"...You're one of them?"
"I work with them."
Sadie turned.
"Well, if you're here, then I'll bet," Her eyes landed on the Romanorum, who stared calmly back.
"The Romanorum. Of course. Still a child, I see."
"Dr. Sadie Hawthorne, you are being executed for crimes against humanity and defecting from the Paladin organization."
Sadie spread her arms.
"Romanorum. Francorum. Langobardorum. Do you think you can kill me so easily? IfI die, a hundred will take my place. If you shoot me, I die happy. Go on. Or give me the gun so I can shoot myself. You fascist hypocrites will only burn yourselves out in the end."
"Fine. Put your hands behind your head, get on your knees," The Romanorum said, nodding to Leda after Sadie obliged.
The shot rang out, the body fell, and blood pooled out onto the floor.
The Romanorum set the C4 and the charge.
"Let's go. There should be about five minutes on the first set charges. We've gotta run, guys."
The retraced their steps, going back along the hallway, past the computer room and the storage room, back out the blown-up door and the bodies in the hall. The Langobardorum set charges in the stairwell leading back up to the main floor and in four different rooms in the building itself, setting the charges at two minutes.
They all stopped a block away, watching as the building blew itself to bits, burning itself down in the nighttime rain. They hurried back to the car, Kaiba speeding away from the building as a local cop showed up.
It all felt... incomplete, Kaiba noted as they sped back down the highway.
It was to quick. It felt like they left something out. Like they missed something.
The uptown lights shone bright as the car sped on towards a hotel, the location specified by the Langobardorum. The three leaders piled out of the car, weapons hidden underneath coats.
Kaiba drove by his mansion, letting Leda and Hiram go inside before pulling away to go to Kaibacorp. He would wait everything out in the lab.
Locking the car, going down to the lab, he noticed how tired he suddenly was.
The doors slid open, revealing Jonouchi's almost-healed body, still alone in the lab. Rotwang's maschinemench stood, instead of laying on the table, pale, thin, and ghostly, still without a face.
Pulling up a chair from one of the computer terminals, Kaiba noticed small bloodstains on the floor. He barely thought about it before siting down beside Jonouchi's operating table and falling asleep.
[Ende]
TIIIIRRRREEEEDDD... Been lazing around all day, thought I'd churn this out. One more chapter to go. I'm working on another story besides this one (It hasn't been published yet, still working on the first chapter)- I guess it'd be the sequel (?) to this one- be sure to check it out! ; )