Omega [REDUX]
Chapter 3
If she'd had her way, she should be asleep now. Anna loved sleep more than a lot of other things in her life, but unfortunately, the academy clearly had other plans for her.
DELTA DIVISION MATCH 16703412
VALKYRIE VS ARCHANGEL
MATCHTYPE: SINGLE ELIMINATION
ARENA: URBAN-1
MATCH STARTS 0800 TOMORROW
She sighed as the notification popped up on her datapad, and rushed to alert her teammates, all of which were already preparing for bed. "PEOPLE!" she hollered. "We've got a match tomorrow, 0800 hours! We need to plan!"
"Dammit," she heard Merida curse as the redhead emerged from their team's shower area.
Anna sat down in the middle of the open circle that lead to their rooms, the gleaming moonlight illuminating their marble like floor. She dropped the datapad and pressed a button, allowing a circular marble slab to push upwards to form their makeshift table, as was the standard issue in all team rooms. Evidently the academy wished to ensure their recruits would get used to the most uncomfortable of circumstances as possible.
Belle emerged first, bringing out a series of papers and datachips. "I have a new plan for this one," she remarked to Anna as she sat down.
Anna gave a small giggle. "That's what you said last time."
"Shut up."
Merida and Rapunzel came next, Merida twirling an arrow, Rapunzel hugging a few textbooks. "Urban-1 again?" Rapunzel exclaimed in annoyance. "I hate that map."
"We keep dying on it, that is a given," Merida acknowledged as they took their places next to Anna. "It's like, both open and closed at the same time, and we can't seem to predict where the enemy is coming from."
"Then don't."
They all turned to the voice. Elsa.
"And… remind me how that would be beneficial to our strategy again?" Merida asked, a tinge of cockiness in her voice. Belle cringed visibly.
"You plan for every possible scenario." Elsa's seemingly hypnotic tone floating through Anna's ears as she watched her sit down as well. Elsa's eyebrows furrowed. "Your… 'map', confirms this."
"You do realise we have only one night to finish this, right?" Merida continued. "We can't possibly plan every contingency."
They watched as Elsa took another long, hard look at the map. "You move very defensively. Check all your corners."
"That doesn't help," Belle chimed in at last, plugging in a few of her chips into Anna's datapad, bringing up a 3D projection of their previous attempts of clearing the area. "We're either gunned down quickly or sniped out when we don't go to CQB."
"Your only choice is CQB here," Elsa said. "The roofs are too open. And with all due respect, you can't countersnipe that effectively."
"If that's the case, how do we fight defensively?" said Rapunzel, a little bit annoyed. Anna felt her heart thud; she could see where this was going.
Apparently, so could Elsa. "I understand you think you've done the best you can, and I believe that given the circumstances, that is true." She took a deep breath continuing. "You still have to work on positioning and aiming." She drew out a datapad of her own, and cleared Belle's projection.
Belle was about to protest, but Elsa cut her off with a projection of her own. "This was the last match you were in, also on Urban-1." The blue projection marked out each and every recruit, and for a brief moment they rewatched the movements of the recruits. Elsa was definitely correct about where she'd gotten the footage from; Anna recognized her movements along the roofs of the lower buildings, taking out the soldier who was escaping intelligence, before getting stabbed in close quarters.
"You were only able to take out one soldier, and that was because he severely underestimated your ability to aim at someone in the open."
"With all due respect," Merida cut in sharply, "I'd appreciate if you'd refrain from criticizing us. You haven't even been in the arena; you don't understand what exactly we face in this map."
"Then tell me."
"On every other map we can do better, but this one allows our opponents to keep shutting down."
Abruptly Elsa cut the projection, her face expressionless. "Suit yourself, I suppose," she said, her voice monotone, pushing herself for her feet and leaving for a room.
Silence hung over the remaining four recruits until they heard Elsa's door slide shut.
"What the hell was that, Merida?" Anna asked, somewhat angry herself. "You didn't have to do that?"
"She doesn't have the right to lecture us on what we should be doing," Merida retorted. "She needs to know her place."
"You weren't so open about that opinion when she took Ursula down," Belle said quietly.
That seemed to placate Merida. "Whatever, okay?" she said. "She still shouldn't tell us that we're not putting effort it."
"That wasn't her point," Rapunzel joined in. "She just said we had work to do. We'd better forget this and get back to planning."
"How does that work?" Belle asked. "We're a member short."
"We'll just position her somewhere I guess and get her to fulfil whatever it requires of her." Anna sighed as she reloaded the render of the map. "We'd better get cracking, else we're not going to get enough sleep."
Anxiety forced Anna to wake up.
She was still lying on the marble slab when she'd decided to take a little bit of shut-eye. Evidently that had not worked; she'd taken a lot of shut eye. The faintest rays of sunlight were now visible as she looked up at the sky.
Then she jumped involuntarily. Elsa was sitting directly opposite her. The blonde raised her head to look at her. "What?"
"Nothing," Anna replied, "I just thought you wouldn't be up this early."
"I hardly sleep."
"I'm sorry about yesterday." The words came pouring out, even though Anna realized that she had no obligation to apologise.
"No one's at fault here. The only thing that's going to happen is that you'll all die in the arena today."
"Excuse me?" Anna half-glared at Elsa.
"I've seen your plan." Elsa slid the datapad back across to Anna. "To prevent further disagreement I'll go along with it. But I must warn you that this current strategy will only serve to harm your team standing in your division."
Anna fell quiet at the statement. Elsa got up and went back to her room.
The entire team was silent as they reported to the simulation room. Their pods had already been prepped by the techs, so they could load up and get in as soon as they could. From the somewhat annoyed scrunching of feature's on Merida's face, Anna could tell she still wasn't happy. Belle and Rapunzel refrained from conversation, simply acknowledging Elsa with nods.
She couldn't tell what Elsa was thinking; she was as expressionless as the night before.
"Valkyrie Squadron, load up and engage neural synchronisations."
Wordlessly they followed the announcement's instructions, mounting their pods and leaning back. Anna hit the buttons on the control panel, allowing the fiber-like cover to close on top of her, the inside booting up with a soft blue glow. Select loadout were the words upon the screen. Anna reached out to input the necessary commands, and finalized her selection.
The pods started whirring loudly again. Anna felt a severe disorientating, nauseating feeling permeate her being, and her eyeballs rolled back in her skull. Everything went black.
When she came to she was lying on a dusty concrete floor. She blinked once or twice as she came to. Her ASR1 and T2 pistol were lying next to her. Her reflexes finally kicking in, she reached out to retrieve her weapons and ammunition. "Status report," she spoke into her COM unit as she slung the rifle over a shoulder and had the pistol clasped firmly in her hand.
"I'm good."
"Good to go."
"I'm already in position."
"Elsa?" Anna had not heard from her.
"I'm here."
That's… reassuring, Anna thought. "Alright, we know our positions. Let's get to it." She glanced down at her helmet's minimap display in the bottom left of her visor as she gingerly walked towards her sniper nest.
"Shit!" she heard Merida say. "I've got contact! North of my location." Gunfire echoed through the COM unit. She checked Merida's location on the minimap: somewhere out in the arena square, with two marked hostiles on her map.
Anna rushed past empty corridors a little rashly, but luckily no ill will came her way. She reached the sniper nest, already hearing the sounds of gunfire. Frantically she unslung her rifle, planted a ground-based motion sensor, and took aim through the scope.
She watched a poorly timed arrow strike the broken concrete slabs in front of Merida' opponents. They had ducked, and were reloading their automatic weapons. Anna timed her shot to the moment when they pushed themselves back up to target Merida again, and she pulled the trigger.
The shot emitted a loud bang; the bullet trail sailed over her target's head. "Shit!" one of them yelled, "Sniper! Get your dicks in the ground!" Frustrated, Anna pulled back the bolt on the ASR1 and took aim again through the scope. She fired again, watching the white trails miss their mark and her targets reposition themselves.
"Can't get a clear shot on them," Anna reported as she pulled back the bolt once more. "They keep using cover."
"What do you expect them to be doing, Anna?" came a slightly irritated Merida. "Exposing themselves to be shot?"
"Shut up guys," Belle cut in. "Focus on taking them—"
A loud discharge filled their COM channel, and Belle dropped off their HUD.
"What the fuck?" Anna managed to say incredulously as she kept up the suppression on Merida's contacts. "What the hell was that?"
"Someone's armed with a shotgun," Elsa replied calmly. "Everyone watch their backs, especially—"
Something painful cut through Anna's back as she was aiming through the scope, and their communication was cut off. Everything went black again.
Anna slammed her fist onto the pod cover even before she opened her eyes.
They'd already lost two people. This is going downhill. Elsa pulled back the slide on the T2, cautiously proceeding down the hallway she was currently in, her footsteps silent upon the concrete floor.
Footsteps. Decently loud; evidently whoever was coming did not factor in how sound would affect his or her performance. Directly ahead, coming from the… left side. Elsa brought the pistol up to bear, narrowing her eyes to aim. Any moment now.
The soldier rounded the corner in a sprinting fashion, his rifle pointed to the ground, totally unaware of Elsa's presence. The first round caught him in the shoulder. As his body turned with momentum he cried out in pain, falling towards the floor. Midway down Elsa fired off another shot that sliced through his skull, eliminating him from the simulation.
3 versus 5. 7 shots left in clip. Still a short distance to cover to Merida. She took a deep breath and continued down the hallway, aiming the pistol down the whole way. "Merida, Rapunzel. Do you copy?"
"Still pinned down over here!" Merida managed to reply.
"I'm freed up," Rapunzel stated. "I'm close to Anna's position. Moving to recon."
"Don't!" Elsa shouted out her warning as she closed in on Merida. "Aim your rifle down the hallway closest to Anna's position. Wait for 5 seconds."
"But—"
"Do it! 4 seconds!"
She heard Rapunzel raise the rifle. "Whatever you say boss…"
"Two seconds."
"One second."
As she turned the wall into the open city square she heard Rapunzel open fire. She raised her own pistol, having successfully flanked Merida's opponents, and opened fire. Her first rounds caught one of the soldiers in the gut. His cry of pain alerted his ally, who turned towards Elsa, but she fired off another round. The bullet pierced his palm, forcing him to drop the weapon. A quick flick of her wrist and Elsa pulled off two headshots just before another resounding discharge sent a sniper round whizzing past her face.
SHIT. Elsa hit the deck, crawling towards some more rubble. "Merida! Get into cover!" She ducked instinctively as she heard another loud bang. "Merida!"
"I got this." Elsa struggled into a better position as she saw Merida rise to her full height out of her cover and take aim with her weapon. As she pulled the bowstring back and took aim, a round caught her in the chest, and she collapsed. She disappeared off the HUD.
"Elsa?" came Rapunzel's voice. "You okay? I just saw Merida drop off the HUD."
"Yeah," Elsa replied, half-listening, still calculating the trajectory of the sniper. "Did you take out the other one?"
"Yes, you were right about his—" Her communication cut off abruptly, synchronized with the loud discharge of the sniper rifle. Elsa swore as she dashed from her cover, having already seen the bullet trail, and caught a glimpse of the scope's reflection in the sunlight. She had a large open distance to cover to the sniper nest, but everywhere around her was exposed.
Screw this. Elsa broke into a run, straight towards the sniper. Evidently there had been a reloading of the weapon, because she got a few yards towards her target location before her enhanced hearing picked up the sound of a spent cartridge clattering to the floor. Frantically she strafed to the right, dropping her spent ammunition clip to the ground as a round pierced the air which she had previously occupied seconds before. That won't happen again.
She could now hear the sliding of the straight-pull bolt. Elsa raised the pistol as the sniper came into view. She pulled the trigger once.
The bullet was dead-on; not on the sniper's head, for he fired in the exact same instant, but her bullet connected with the sniper round mid-flight. She didn't bother to look for the ricochet; she already knew she'd hit. Instead Elsa fired again, this time straight for the sniper.
Valkyrie victory flashed upon her HUD as she found her movement suddenly restricted as the simulation began to shut down, her own vision fading to black.
Elsa avoided her team for a while after the simulation; she felt awkward going back to her team after the events that had transpired prior to her first combat scenario. Any form of interaction might equate to shoving it in their faces, or at least, that was the idea that was currently running in her head. They had a bunch of free time until the end of lunch, so for the majority of that period of time she disappeared like a ghost.
She darted across the campus silently, invisible to the rest of the students as she reached the roof, open to the scenery that stretched far and wide. The campus was situated on a mountain that teemed with wildlife and overgrown with vegetation, along a plain that stretched from horizon to horizon. The sun's rays touched everything down here, leaving the warmth caressing her smooth milky skin.
Elsa stood to her full height from once. Being up on the roof gave her a sense of freedom; something she'd yet to master. As much as she'd hated growing up in captivity, it had bound her to the concept; she found it extremely difficult to think for herself, as much as she would subconsciously do so at times, leaving her confused and broken. She needed to get used to it. Right now she felt empty and voided, like some part of her was missing.
She leaned against the exterior of the stairwell from which she had exited and looked across the landscape, and inhaled deeply.
"You come here too?" A voice startled her out of her skin and she jolted around, almost ready to strike. She relaxed. It was Anna. She felt a little better now.
"Yeah."
Anna raised an eyebrow. "Huh. Funny. I come here a lot too."
They both fell into a shared moment of silence as they admired the scenery. "What do you like about this place?"
Elsa shrugged. "There's a word I use to describe this feeling, but I can't think of it now."
"Can I guess for you?"
"Shoot. We'll figure it out eventually, I guess."
"Relaxed?"
"In some sense, but not quite."
"Content?"
"Not really."
"Free?"
Elsa contemplated it for a while. "Yeah. I think that's it."
"Hmm."
Another moment of silence, this time more comfortable.