Reach and Rescue

[ACMI2: Fanatic]

Annoyingly the guards at the girl's block weren't allowing anyone else through.

"We will perform a search with our own guards, you will search the exterior of the building."

The trio moved with the rest of the guards, GV and Saten still taking the attention of them to hide Joule's muteness. That said, the mask the guards wore was actually helping hide her facial paralysis.

The other guards eventually led to a specific spot in the woods near the girl's building.

"Why here?" Saten asked, "What's special about here?"

The guard who had led them pointed up to the roof of the girl's building, specifically to a box-like thing.

"There is a deployable chute up there that makes it possible to escape to ground level painlessly. Originally designed to help people get out during a fire. If the intruder tries to use it to escape though, we'll be right here to catch them."

It was a good thing Saten was at the back of the group of guards, as she was the only one of the three that couldn't hide her expression of horror at that news. If Uiharu tried to escape through here, it would be a trap.

GV remained calm and continued talking "Is that their only way out?"

The guard nodded "The search patrols will force them to keep ascending if they want to avoid being found. It's basic practice as it makes their escape harder. When she gets to the roof, that will be the only path left."

GV nodded and he mimed to Saten. He pointed at Joule, then at her, then away.

"You two need to find another way, let me be a distraction."

Joule would have spoken out if she could've but Saten nodded, trying to work on another plan and she took Joule with her.

When they were away from the crowd of guards, Saten explained her plan "Climbing up to the roof would be near-impossible, I'm not strong enough and I certainly couldn't take you with me, so we'll need another way up."

Joule was still annoyed at being separated from GV but she nodded, pulling out her pad of paper.

Before she wrote, she put the goals in order and the resources they had. Finally she and Saten created the plan together.

There were lots of robots around, patrolling and looking for Uiharu in their own way.

Saten quickly stepped out to stop them.

"Umm… stop current orders and follow us."

She needed to grab another robot from a group so they'd have enough for all three of them and headed over to the far side of the girl building.

"Line up against the wall, and help carry us to the roof."

The robots were forced to obey those wearing guard uniforms and they wouldn't send any kind of alert unless someone was paying attention.

Joule and Saten rode the robots to the top where Saten saw a figure quickly moving towards the escape chute.

"Uiharu, wait!" She gasped out. The figure froze and spun, shocked to hear her voice.

"Saten? And Joule?"

She walked over to them quickly "Why are you here?"

Joule went to start writing but Saten got there first, though she might have misunderstood the question as she began explaining the trick with the robots.

"No, not that." Uiharu stopped her "Why did you both come?"

There was an emotion-filled waver in her voice and she seemed to mostly be focusing on Saten.

Joule held up the paper she'd finished writing on though "Saving a kidnapped friend, obviously, the others are probably on their way anyway. We just got here first."

Saten nodded as she read it and turned back to Uiharu "And on top of that, I'm your best friend. It's my duty to make trouble to help you, you know? I couldn't sit idly by while you were in trouble."

"You troublemakers…" Uiharu sighed and Saten smiled at her.

"Well if you want to keep us from causing more trouble, you'd better come with us, right?"

Uiharu smiled "What kind of logic is that? I suppose I do though. Let's go home."

Since the chute was not an option, the robots would do for their descent. Uiharu quickly hacked them with her new computer so that they wouldn't give any warning to the guards.

They rode the robots down and then made a run for it. If they could make it to the gate then Uiharu could hack through and they'd be out. GV would be able to meet up with them later.

"There it is!" Saten panted. The gate was only a minute or so away at their current pace.

It was Joule that noticed something was wrong first. Her illusion vanished as the dragon awoke.

Closing her eyes as she ran, she tapped on the dragon's power to make an illusion. Words that could appear in her friend's peripheral vision (To avoid distracting them.)

"Joule: The AIM jammers are disabled, an enemy is coming."

Saten and Uiharu were surprised but they didn't stop running.

Joule's dragon was still scared. Whatever the enemy's boss could do, it seemed to have something that put her parasite on edge.

It did warn her of the coming attack though and Joule shifted the world to make the first attack miss.

The white dragon shot through the place they were "meant to be." it wouldn't have killed any of them but it would have thrown them off their feet and destroyed the robots that were still with them.

"Such a- huh?" The boss, the same one from the van earlier, was strolling up behind them "You again four-eyes? Are you going to make trouble for me then? I guess if it was you, it makes sense how you fooled those idiotic guards."

Joule focused, raising her hand and creating words in the air "Who are you? Why are you doing this?"

"My name is Kimi Shundan, and for why-" She charged forwards and Joule shifted perception again. Shundan had memorised the location though and she grabbed Saten out of what would have seemed to her like thin air.

"If you meant why am I doing this," she emphasised the last word "It's so I could claim a hostage. I don't even need to threaten that orphanage any more. Say, neither of you want your friend to get hurt right?"

End of chapter:

I just want to note one thing: In canon, Uiharu had broken her laptop when she met back up with Saten. That didn't happen here so the Laptop isn't broken, so Kimi wasn't distracted and didn't drop Saten before what will happen next.