Crossover Escape: Gotta be more than Lucky to survive

1.17 Dubious invite

It was invariably the sounds of Ghost’s and Rӓv’s bickering that dragged Luca into wakefulness. Considering he’d barely had two hours sleep Luca was unimpressed. It might not have been so bad if he could have just gone back to sleep but unfortunately once Luca was awake, he was awake there would be no snoozing.

Luca sat up and shared an understanding look with Tails while Holly flailed around in the bed. Ghost seemed perpetually chirpy, Luca had never seen him look even remotely sleep deprived. As for Rӓv Luca was fairly certain she hadn’t even tried to sleep. Luca had originally prepared for a sleepless night but after the last-minute chaotic rescue he’d decided that they should sleep while they could since he expected the WIC group to call a meeting early in the morning. He was starting to think it would have been better to have not tried.

Luca got dressed and then settled in with a tablet to look over the information Rӓv had pulled from the WIC hive computer systems. It was as good a way as any to kill time. Before Luca noticed it was time for breakfast at the cafeteria and there was still no message from the WIC suits.

It wasn’t until Luca looked outside on the way down to breakfast that he realised why they hadn’t heard from the suits. The absolute chaos outside suggested that they would not be ready to address the issue for some time to come. Tails came up beside Luca and followed his line of sight before he shook his head.

[Tails: It’s a sad day when you realize that the underworld handles things in a far superior way than the rest of the world.]

[Holly: maybe we have been worrying to much? They have been basically relying on the participants to deal with attackers with maybe one good responding group amongst the guards. With this level of trouble response they shouldn’t be able to make too big of a problem.]

[Lucky: on the contrary their poor response to a relatively minor incident means that they are likely to get their heads to deep in something and not be able to deal with the consequences.] Luca shook his head and turned away from the scrabble of people. They had only set off the alarms and freed some people no real destruction had been wrought but Luca hoped it might at least let them re-think their intentions.

Luca settled in for breakfast noting carefully who looked particularly tired and who wasn’t present in the cafeteria. They ate leisurely and it wasn’t till well after the last participant staggered in and finished eating that the Mr Important Suit entered.

“Attention all participants a massive attack was undertaken on our facility last night and precious life saving research has been destroyed. We ask all participants to be alert against these evil attackers that seek to ruin the lives of many.”

Luca struggled with himself but managed to arrange his features into an affronted expression as the speech continued. It was a typical propaganda rousing speech, would have done a politician proud. Once the speech finished a group of three ‘medical’ staff came in. They walked around the room and handed out a small bottle of pills to each participant.

When they came to Luca’s table the team accepted the pills and listened to the explanation, “these are a specially developed medicine that helps accelerate healing rates. They can help a person heal enough to survive even a fatal wound.” Luca looked down at the small bottle, it sounded like a miracle medicine. Thus, it seemed like an exaggeration and if it wasn’t then what would be the side effects. More importantly this was not an underworld blood contest why were they handing out lifesaving medicine. They trying to make insinuations about the attacks or about future circumstance

Luca put the bottle away with no intention to use it and spotted the same resolution in the eyes of his team. As a parting remark Mr Important Suit stated, “The contest sight inspections will start tomorrow take today to rest and recover.”

Luca narrowed his eyes. He was certain that the mess in the early hours of the morning hadn’t affected the competition site. He’d seen nothing that matched a TacWar match zone. Which meant that they either needed to re-group personal or they were using delaying tactics. Still Luca would take the extra time to try and get through the rest of the information Rӓv had collected.

Luca led the way back to there suit and they settled into research until ghost got too boisterous and Tail chucked him out the window. Luca properly checked that he wasn’t injured in the fall and then decided to leave him out. It was easier to work without the distraction. Though they sensibly kept the coms running so that Ghost could listen in. Even if that did mean having to tune out his and Rӓv’s consistent bickering.

[Rӓv: Huh? Power readings?] Luca put down the disturbing medical report he was reading and looked over at Rӓv. [Rӓv: The source is a computer inside the mountain?]

[Ghost: The mountain in the distance?] Luca blinked at Ghosts words before he got up and walked into the next room to look out the window at the relatively small mountain in the distance. As if things weren’t strange enough.

Before Luca could think further on the matter someone knocked on the suit door. Luca moved back and glanced at the others indicating that they hadn’t expected anyone and according to the map Ghost was in the woods outside somewhere.

Luca walked over and opened the door. “Well hello. Since no one has anything to do today we’re arranging a practice match for the uninjured teams. Zeno suggested that we invite your tea.” Luca looked over the tall dark-skinned man. Luca recognised him as the leader of one of the participant teams but didn’t know him as a regular TacWar fighter. Luca had taken note of his group simply because he hadn’t recognised them. Still he’d seen nothing so far that suggested they were anything other than a little known group of participants.

The main issue Luca had with the invite was that Zeno was involved and casually arranging a practice game before an official competition was a strange practice. Still if you wanted more information you needed to be involved. Luca wondered actually if the faceless masks or the black mufflers would appear during the match. Either way that would say something about the information the groups had received.