1.5 Delaying tactics
1198 Words
They stepped into the lounge just as a clearly Mr Important Suit stepped between the counters of the boarding gate and cleared his throat.
“Ahem, alright contestants thank you for coming. We will be departing for the contest base camp in the next few minutes. We are aware that there have been some unfortunate attempts to prevent participation in our TacWar contest but rest assured that no one has been seriously injured. We are also arranging for the best possible medical treatment for all our participants once we land. Until then our competent medical staff will tend to anyone that has been hurt.”
Luca shifted further into the room, noting absently that Holly was subtly approaching. Luca hadn’t met Akira the ‘Holly’, but he had seen a few images making it easy enough to recognise him. He had finer and more delicate features that Tails though they shared the same dark hair and eyes. As the Mr Important Suit continued to speak Luca noticed that the sky was growing increasingly dark.
[Tails: Man this guy must like the sound of his own voice. I also don’t like the complete lack of mention of disappearing people.]
[Rӓv: Could be they don’t know. The manager suit seemed perfectly oblivious to the fact that our driver literally vanished in his seat.]
[Tails: I really wish we had the luxury to back out of this.]
[Lucky: It was supposed to be sunny all day today, correct?]
[Rӓv: Sure wasn’t the early morning sun shinning on the drive… Where did the sun go?]
[Holly: I think a better question is where did the storm come from?]
Luca agreed with the question about the storm as the howling winds grew so loud that Mr Important Suit struggled to be heard. Then the rain hit, if it weren’t for the splatter on the windows Luca would have mistaken it for hail. Then the power went out.
[Rӓv: It’s fine, the airport backup generators will kick in soon]
[Rӓv: Any minute now.]
[Tails: Maybe this airport doesn’t have them]
[Holly: Its regulation mandated that they must have them.]
[Tails: So do we think its broken?]
[Ghost: Oooh playmates here. Maybe they stay this time]
Luca turned to look towards Ghost, following his line of sight to see the creeping shadows going along the entrance corridor through the small windows. A flash of lighting sparked outside, and the white faceless masks become visible.
[Lucky: Well it seems the generator might be dead, but I doubt it was natural causes.] Luca dropped into a backwards tuck and rolled until his back was against a wall. Ghost and Tails followed suite rolling to the other sides of the room while Holly rolled forward under one of the tables to be obscured by the surrounding chairs and people.
Rӓv on the other hand flicked a glowstick into her hand, cracked it, and tossed it at the roof where it stuck all in one smooth motion before she twisted around to slid amongst the crowd. The other would-be players had also noticed the approaching group and had shifted as they prepared. The suits on the other hand seemed oblivious. So maybe the issue with the manager suits wasn’t that they ignored what happened just that they where so oblivious it led to mental substitution.
Still Luca had to wonder about the thought process of the faceless masks as they came through the door into the private terminal lounge. There was a lot of combat potential in this room and while the majority of TacWar players didn’t kill regularly they definitely had the skill and training for it. They needed to know how to kill so they could manage there strength safely when competing. Moreover, at least a third of the participants did actually regular participate in underworld blood sport TacWars. Moreover, unlike Luca and his friends they participated voluntarily and with pleasure.
The faceless masks poured into the room and the fight started. Luca slid out of the room after the first wave. A giant brawl was a messy thing, and he didn’t want any part of it if he could avoid it. He noted that the others also shifted to exit the room. There was one thing that Luca was particularly interested in though. Every action they have made so far speaks of delaying tactics, the best way to delay a flight is if the plane can’t fly. The weather is a good start on that. “Though it’s not like they could have controlled the weather.”
“Da, seems good luck on there part.” Luca ducked aside and the reflexively stabbed at the faceless mask that appeared from the door to his right. The blade struck true and the faceless mask staggered back while Luca gave Ghost a glare.
“Weren’t you on the other side of the room?” Luca demanded as Rӓv, Tails and Holly struggled out of the room one by one.
“Da.” Grigori sported a mischievous smile as he moved forward and grabbed the next faceless mask, shoved him back into a room and pulled the door closed. When he released the door, it rattled. “Tch, boring not good with locks”
“Can you focus?” Rӓv demanded as she kicked another faceless mask away. “There like cockroaches never ending and they just don’t stay down.”
Luca glanced down at his perfectly clean knife for a moment. He’d been concerned that he might have accidentally done serious damage when Ghost startled him, but now there was a different problem. Just what I didn’t want. Vanishing people and now attackers that don’t bleed it’s like we’re hunting ghosts or zombies. “They may be more like cockroaches then you think. Ignore them as much as possible let’s get to the plane.” Luca moved forward quickly using a mixture of disabling strikes and acrobatics to pass the constantly appearing faceless masks until he reached an emergency exit door. “Anyone have a map? I need to get to the plane hangars.”
“Are we running a mission now?” Rӓv asked as she pulled out a palm sized computer, looked like a phone but had the processing power of a supercomputer. It was her favourite hacking tool. Since it looked like a phone, most of the time she even got to take it for competitions.
Luca nodded adjusting the coms to low volume voice with text records. [Lucky: Mission parameters, prevent the faceless masks from out right sabotaging this game start. Shady as it is this game is our exit pass, so it needs to happen. Rӓv, maps and operation co-ordination. Ghost, keep the faceless occupied, I don’t care how just don’t get dead. Tails, see if you can find some sort of commander and figure out if there is an actual plan to this. Holly, I need you to do the hard job, observe the other participants and the suits. The faceless masks have entirely too much information to be getting around on luck and supposition.]
[Roger.] The voices resounded together as the coms and the unit completed the switch to operation mode.
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