Read Or Dare!
Chapter 15
They got the news at the British Library about an hour after the attack on the islanders started. Normally Joker would chide his agents for not contacting them sooner, but they HAD been busy fighting for their lives.
"Is everyone okay?" Wendy asked, alarmed.
"So far, no agents have been lost," Joker noted. In a grim tone he added, "There's been some casualties."
"Can we get assistance to the islands?" Wendy wondered aloud.
"Check where our other agents are," Joker ordered before adding, "to the best of my knowledge, we don't have anyone..."
Wendy made a face. "I'll check.. I think Drake can be moved. He was on a private job with Miss Croft, I think?"
"Call him, offer a bonus if needed," Joker ordered.
"Will do," Wendy hurried off.
Joker sat behind his desk, and sat back with a sigh. "DAMN you, Gentleman," he muttered, thinking of their founder, who might have very well caused all this. The bio labs under the islands certainly looked like their tech...
"Okay, Drake is on his way," Wendy confirmed. She paused, "He's bringing his client along, apparently..."
"Huh," Joker grunted, then remembered who the client, Miss Croft actually was. "Wait... TOMB RAIDER?!"
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Come on, teach!"
NORMALLY Ayami Li was quite able to manage, despite being blind. She had mapped out her living space, had a regular route she took to her teaching job, and so on. However, that went into the crapper once the monster attack started.
"I'm coming, darn it," Ayami managed.
"Shit, we lost Dan!"
"What?" Ayami yelled.
"Never mind! Keep moving!"
In an ideal world, this would have hit when she was at the workshop, with the armored mechs. Alas, she had been off in a parent meeting when things had hit.
(The ability to see glimpses of the future sort of sucked when it was just getting vague prophetic dreams. It would have been VERY helpful to have gotten an exact date and time when things went to hell, damn it.)
They went over an uneven surface, and not THAT far away she could hear the howling of the youma. And human screams.
"They're getting closer. Where are the rest of the staff?!"
Ayami didn't know either. And a very... ominous feeling was creeping up on her. She was begining to think they were screwed.
"Shit! Shit! Fuck!"
A scream rang out, then was cut off with a wet noise. Ayami's hand was suddenly let go, and she stumbled, barely keeping her feet.
"Sorry teach, every man for himself!" the guy scampered off.
Ayami swayed, wondering if she should still try to keep running forward. She heard pounding footsteps, coming closer. "Hello?" she tried.
"Grrrr...," the youma growled.
"Fuck," Ayami managed to get out before they jumped her. The only bright side was that her death was relatively quick.
(She might be comforted to know the kid who abandoned her was set upon and killed shortly after her. Or maybe not.)
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Where are they COMING from?" Dutch complained.
"I think another group busted out of the underground labs," Yomiko noted, using a paper sword to slice a youma in two.
"That was a rhetorical question," Dutch said as he blasted another with a shotgun.
"Arrgh!" Jose, one of the guys they had rescued, screamed as a youma leaped out from cover and ripped his arm off.
"No!" Nancy yelled, firing her machine gun uselessly as youma dragged him off.
Dutch blowed away a wounded youma as he growled, "How far?"
"We're based out of the Academy library," Yomiko said.
"I hope like hell it's defensible," Dutch noted as they FINALLY reached the grounds of the Academy itself.
"It's reasonably," Nancy agreed.
A large, heavy figure stomped by, the big machine patrolling the grounds.
"Is that a MECHA?" Dutch blurted as everyone looked in shock.
Yomiko lead them as they walked by, "Yes, apparently they were built in Shop Class. I have some questions to ask that teacher."
"You got that right," Dutch agreed, blinking.
"Yomiko!" Anita waved from where she was watching the main doors. "Saves more residents?" the little girl asked.
"We found some. Let us in, we need to check in with Shane and the others," Nancy agreed.
"Why is a kid guarding the door?" Dutch had to ask.
"Oh, you haven't heard of Paper Masters. Someone will explain," Nancy told him as they headed inside.
The library was getting crowded with students and adult survivors, but Dutch found someone making coffee and there were sandwiches. "Oh thank god," he sighed as he got a cup.
"One cup each," Yue noted, "we've got limited supplies."
"Right," Dutch nodded.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Revy, left flank! We'll push through," Balalaika ordered.
Weapons blazed as they cut down the attacking monsters. The area nearest the Academy was now MOSTLY secure, and they were out trying to mop up anything else still wandering.
"These things are easier to kill than the dog-thing Shane and I killed," Revy noted as they advanced, "any ideas why?"
"Hgh," Boris grunted, the huge trooper laying down machine gun fire.
"We'll have to investigate that when it's time to clear the tunnels," Balalaika noted, firing her machine gun in careful bursts.
"Looking forward to THAT," Revy growled.
With MOST of Balalaika's forces off the island on merc jobs, they had had to assemble the locals. Not a lot of well trained men, in fact most were the local version of 'mall cops.' A lot of these guys had never killed a thing, and it showed.
"Movement!" one dude yelped and fired into the brush.
"ONLY fire when you know you have a target!" the redhead barked. She added, "There's still civilians around."
"Body," Boris noted.
Balalaika moved up, then winced. "Ayami Li," she recognized what was left of her, despite having been chewed on.
"Shit," Revy muttered. "I wanted to ask how she knew to build those mechs."
"She apparently got glimpses of the future," Balalaika said as she noted the spot on a GPS unit. They'd need to recover the body later.
"Doesn't seem to have helped her much," Revy noted.
They stumbled across two other bodies not far away, both male, then continued the patrol.
"Who's the redhead?" Revy asked Boris, not having seen the woman before.
"Yoko Littner. She works in one of the bars," Boris noted.
Revy made a note to keep a eye out for her. She seemed competant, at least, and they could use people like that.
They hadn't seem a youma for awhile, and started circling back towards the main Academy buildings. "What happened to the island governors?" Revy checked with Balalaika.
The taller woman snorted. "Barricaded in their mansions," she said flatly, then spat out the russianm word for 'cowards.' Balalaika continued, "I expect they'll flee the island as soon as they can."
'Leaving her in charge,' Revy noted. Well, not the worst idea.
"Hey!" Michelle Chang waved from where they guarded the library. "Everyone okay?" she asked gently.
"We're fine," Revy nodded.
Briskly Balalaika said, "It looks like the local area is clear. We should be able to start moving people into better quarters..."
As they got themselves organized, Revy spotted Dutch. "Hey," she sighed. "I heard about Benny. Sorry, man."
"Glad you and Rock are okay, at least," Dutch sighed.
To be continued...
Read or Dare!
Chapter 16
Drake Anderson piloted the helicopter as they raced to the island. The blond haired man was frowning intently, taking in the luxury boats fleeing.
"Like rats fleeing from a sinking ship," Lara Croft noted casually, the brown haired woman taking in the sights.
"I can drop you off somewhere," Drake said. Mind you, the gas on his copter was VERY low, but he could maybe touch down on a tanker or something.
"Are you kidding? This sounds wild," Lara grinned. "And I heard an associate of mine, Keaton is on the island. It would be nice to meet up again."
Drake felt obligated to try again, "This could be very bad, ma'am..."
"Trust me, a zombie infestation is not the strangest thing I've seen," Lara said to him dryly.
The copter managed to land on the edge of the islands, and the two disembarked. Drake hauled out his backpack, provided Lara with a bag of gear, and the two advanced through the woods.
"Conserve your ammo," Drake warned her, hefting a machine gun and firing in short bursts.
Lara used a pistol in each hand, and calmly fired, delivering headshots startling easily. She reloaded gracefully, keeping an eye out on attacking revenants.
"They're not... zombies, are they?" Drake wondered as he shot a snarling humanoid.
"No," Lara agreed grimly.
As they advanced the numbers of attackers fell off, and eventually they reached the town itself.
"Is that a MECHA?" Lara blurted as the humanoid machine stromped up to them.
"Looks like it," Drake admitted, amused to see something fluster the infamous 'Tomb Raider'.
The hatch popped open, revealing a young woman. "I thought we had rounded up most of the survivors?" she muttered, "Koyomi Kishro, Mech Pilot."
"We dropped in via copter, I'm looking for Yomiko Readman, Nancy Mukahari or Shane Llewellyn?" Drake asked.
"Shane-sensei?" Koyomi brightened. "He's sort of running the camp, they're based out of the main Library."
"Why does him using the Library not surprise me?" Drake muttered.
"Friend of yours?" Lara asked mildly.
"I sort of field-trained him. Long story," Drake waved it off.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"So you're functionally immortal?" Nancy asked as she and her employer were catching up after surviving the first wave of attackers.
"And you can walk through walls," Rin Asogi pointed out, "why aren't you the world's best thief, or something?"
"You'd get hunted down and never spend any of it," Mimi noted.
"Exactly," Nancy agreed.
The three women were on watch duty, perched in a clock tower on one side of the campus. From up there they could see if any more of the creatures were getting near enough to attack and sound an alarm.
"And your pals are Paper Masters?" Mimi noted. "I haven't seen those since we ran into a bunch in China."
"I guess if you've lived long enough you'll have seen it all," Nancy mused.
"A lot. I still get surprised... I haven't seen this particular style of monster," Rin admitted. "Undead, yes. Zombies and such..."
"You realize that WE are going to get roped in when they go hunting the source, right?" Mimi sighed to Rin.
"Ugh," Rin agreed, "not another bug hunt."
"You've seen the film Aliens?" Nancy blinked.
"We watch movies! We're not total sticks in the mud," Rin pouted.
Nancy just chuckled.
"Nancy!" a voice called from below, "I've brought tea!"
"Yomiko," Nancy smiled fondly as the other woman brought a thermos of tea up to them.
"Thanks," Rin smiled at her, then casually took a flask from under her shirt and poured vodka into her cup.
"Er...," Yomiko blinked.
"It doesn't really effect us much," Mimi noted, also spiking her drink.
"Anything new come up?" Nancy asked Yomiko, then blinked as new figures walked into the compound. "That's Drake!"
"I'll go see what's going on," Yomiko promised, leaving them the thermos and then hurrying downstairs.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"You're telling me you guys were undercover on the islands looking for a lost LIBRARY?" Revy blurted.
Balalaika, Revy, Rock and Shane were talking over coffee in one of the library meeting rooms. Shane, after the first attack, had managed to phone Joker and get permission to blow their cover. Not that it hadn't already been blown by his and Yomiko using their powers in public...
"Well, yes," Shane admitted, "among other things."
"Fuck," Revy muttered.
"It's not that crazy," Balalaika surprised Revy by saying, "there's a similar Russian agency. I was military escort, on one of their jobs."
"Seriously," Revy blinked.
"There is some very weird stuff out in the world," Balalaika shrugged.
Rock addressed Shane, "So you were in the tunnels looking for the lost books?"
"Correct," Shane nodded, "we had checked out most of the abandoned facilities on the surface."
"Huh," Revy muttered.
Shane turned to Balalaika, "As a side note, there is a LOT of odd 'stuff' out there in the woods and such. I'll pass on what we found, once all this is over."
Balalaika made a face, "I am wondering if I was conned, taking over this place..."
Everyone ignored that. "Do you have any information on the tunnels that we don't have, yet?" Rock checked.
"No," Shane shook his head, "Our bosses are looking into the tech in the labs there, but haven't found anything."
"Other than it resembling the 'Ijin' event," Balalaika added.
"Okay, how the HELL did that all get covered up?" Revy had to ask, her and Rock having not heard of any of it.
"Money and political power," Shane shrugged.
"Especially with how the USA embarrassed themselves," Balalaika added, amused.
There was a brisk knock on the door. "There's a Drake Anderson and Lady Croft here...?" a voice called.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Lara Croft watched the survivors with amusement as she reloaded her pistols and readied new clips. Talking Anderson into taking her along was a huge opportunity, she felt.
One might wonder WHY she was happy being on an island infested by biological monsters. But sadly, Lara's greatest enemy now was simple boredom. She had gone to most of the hard to reach sites, had broken into the deepest , darkest ruins, and she had ran out of things to DO. This, on the other hand, sounded fun.
"Croft," a voice sounded disapproving.
Lara turned and smiled cooly. Recognizing Prof Keaton she smiled, "Been awhile. You tried to shoot me when I was recovering that statue."
"Stealing, not recovering," Taichi Hiraga-Keaton noted flatly.
"You say toMAto, I say Tomato," Lara quipped.
"What are you doing here?" Keaton wondered.
"I was out on an expedition with Mr Anderson," Lara answered mildly, "as soon as I heard about the emergency I knew we had to help."
Keaton looked at her dubiously, "Oh really?"
Lara smiled calmly, "Of course." She put her pistols into her holsters as she asked, "Do they have a plan to deal with this?"
Keaton warily said, "Yes, they are organizing a expedition into the tunnels. We aren't sure who they are taking in."
"Hmm, interesting," Lara noted mildly.
"Attention, everyone," Balalaika emerged from the meeting room.
'Here we go,' Lara thought eagerly.
To be continued...
Notes: It should be noted that while I have nothing against Tomb Raider, she's probably considered a shitty archaeologist. I'm also writing her as kind of 'bored idle rich' though admittedly that's just MY take and may not be canon.