Recent Posts

AJ’s appearance was convenient. Sabine’s instincts wanted her to believe it was too convenient; a friend of Pippa’s who nullified mutations and reported to their crisis as a paramedic. It was a lot of layers of “fate.” Pippa wanted to trust AJ, but Sabine was skeptical, as was her tradition when things sounded to good to be true. The Agent kept rationalizing that, if he was part of the team trying to capture them, he was putting in a lot of work he did not need to do. Sure, he was leading them somewhere, but without him, Sabine would have been fighting armed enemies blind.

For now, for Pippa’s sake, she was putting her faith in AJ. Pippa was concerned a fight was imminent, which sounded likely. ”If there’s a fight, I’m handling it and AJ is getting you out of here,” she warned. Sabine would not patronize Pippa, but she was a civilian Sabine wanted safe. She had to trust AJ wanted that, too.

Escape amidst the chaos sounded unlikely until AJ offered a unique solution. ”We could… take a firetruck,” she repeated flatly. Then she considered it, repeating it with more amenability. ”We could take a firetruck. We’re being targeted and I should have the authority to commandeer it, which is slightly more ethical than stealing.” It required more paperwork, but she could worry about that when she was not dead.

”Yeah,” she decided. Either they got away under the cover of an emergency vehicle, or a helicopter chased them in a defensible moving fortress. ”I like it. That’s the plan. Lead on, AJ. I hope one of you feels comfortable driving a fifty foot vehicle.”

When it came to first impressions, people who met default Sabine considered her intimidating. That was why she tried so hard to reflect when she engaged with people; it was less off-putting. The real Sabine shined in situations like this. Guns were going off and they were improvising to stay alive; no one found her intimidating when it came to life and death.

They had to walk and plan, and Pippa offered to use her powers. It was a good strategy, but it was a moot point while she was using an Adapted as a crutch. Using her powers was also a draining experience and she was still recovering from a bullet wound. ”Table the idea for now; maybe when we get somewhere out of sight.” Pippa could give them something valuable, and she had gone through enough for Sabine not to treat her like a fragile damsel, but they had to be smart.

AJ kept them moving, keeping control of the situation and his patient. Sabine was there to cover the rear and prevent surprises, and she was committed to it. She heard the broad strokes of his suggestions. A stairway, a less hectic path. He was right that no one was repelling yet; maybe they could see she was keeping the firearm aimed in the general direction of the chopper, waiting for someone to try. The alternate answer was that everyone who had to be on the ground was there already.

It was fortunate Sabine settled on a pair of comfortable tennis shoes over heels, because walking backwards down the stairs while leveling a gun needed enough focus. ”They’re targeting us, so hopefully by clearing out, the mob only has to worry about itself.” Being trampled was bad, but being trampled and shot was definitively worse.

Errant gunshots still rang through the air, but they were close to where they were now. Clearly their pursuers were not hanging around in the stands. She spoke loudly to call over the crowd and the ringing lingering from the gunfire. ”You have somewhere defensible for us, AJ? I’m guessing we don’t have our own escape chopper.” That would make life more convenient, so she was guessing no.

If Sabine was not shot, and it sounded like she was not the target, she could assume they were not looking to kill her. They had clean shots and she was clearly going to make herself their problem. She had some freedom to cause havok, then, though all plans had an upper threshold for the bullshit they were willing to accommodate. Sabine simply had the opportunity to find out how much trouble it was worth to keep her alive.

A fist made contact with her face from, as she was warned, her right. The hit dazed her, but the gloved hand offered some padding to soften the blow enough not to stagger her. Now she knew where an arm was, so her new best friend, Baton the baton, whacked at the space in front of her. Maybe an elbow, maybe a forehead; it was hard to guess, but occasionally she hit something with a resounding clunk that felt good.

Eventually, when she took a swing, there was nothing in front of her. Either the attacker was on the ground or backed off. Sabine took the opportunity to limp hastily back toward a voice apparently checking on Pippa.

Much to her surprise, the light of the world came back, stunning her eyes until the adjusted and she could see the chaos of the stadium clearly. People were tripping over each other, fighting blind with whoever got in their way. She could relate, but it posed the question of why she could suddenly see.

Sabine looked immediately to Pippa once she was recalibrated, surveying her. "Did someone try to get to you? And where did you get a gun?" She shifted her gaze to the man inspecting Pippa. If he was with the strike squad, they did an amazing job planting him, but that was still a possibility she had to be on guard for. "Who are you? And why can I..."

It was obvious. She did get her bell rung, so it took a few seconds to get there, but she recognized the sensation of suddenly being unaffected by some mutation-born oddity. "A Kappa," she muttered to herself. "You're an Adapted, yes? Can you tell me what I missed and how you got here?" There was a lot to process and no time to do it, so she was trying to get a handle on anything she could in the seconds she had.

Sabine was not one to invade people's personal space, but she knew how chaotic things could get with a mass of people, and that was before you put those people in the perpetual dark. She was not about to admit it, but with how few people Sabine kept in her life, Pippa was becoming the person Sabine spent more time with than anyone else. She was not going to let Pippa get hurt for having Sabine around.

There was a shift as Pippa changed her position. "Comms say HQ isn't reporting a random blackout. I think you have the right idea of it; let's just Binge and chill until I'm wonderfully non-threatening." She had heard that phrase around, so it sounded like it applied to the life of retreating from the public eye and binging on fast food.

The comms were buzzing with some feedback, but no one knew what was going on. Through the clamoring of people trying to blindly shuffle around each other, Sabine heard someone call out Pippa's name. She doubted her men would be shouting for Pippa, but the voice sounded concerned and Sabine was suspicious. She had to shelve those suspicions when the voice shouted for Pippa to get down. He knew something they didn't.

Sabine finally recognized one of the sounds she was hearing in the crowd. The whirring sound of someone coming down a rope. There was no backup coming down here; she would have known. She heard the first set of feet touch down behind them and jumped into action. She could not see anything, but she let go of Pippa's hand, turning to lunge over her seat. She banged her knee on the cement behind her chair's back, but she felt what she assumed were legs, which she drive her shoulder into the shins of hard.

It was easy to lower your guard emotionally when you had to focus on staying alive. Sabine did not keep her mother a secret, at least not with SUPER. There were concerns over her due to the actions of her mother, so everything had to be disclosed, but typically that knowledge stayed with higher-ups in the organization.

Sabine probably expected Sveta to tell Pippa any dirty details, but Sabine's mutant mother was evidently news to her. "Yeah, my mother was a mutant. She's back on the other side. In prison," she admitted. "She got mad at my father one day, and she didn't mean to, but..." Sabine was struggling to focus with the extremes she had put her body through, but even still, she was unsure Pippa needed the gory details.

"It was an accident, but she should have learned to control her powers. That was why I worried; I didn't want to end up like her." Sabine grabbed the paddle and awkwardly, quietly, started paddling them toward land. "And if I did, I wanted to know SUPER would teach me not to lose control."

Sabine got a bad reputation for her hesitance when it came to mutants. She did not hate mutants; her experience with her mother left her concerned about the consequences of unchecked mutations, but she did not assume mutants were bad. On the contrary, she was impressed by mutants who had full control over their special abilities. She also recognized the challenge of living with the consequences and costs of extreme genetics. Everything a person did had some cost, but how did a body find a cost for fireballs? Or, as it were today, psychometry.

Pippa was doing her part and more, so Sabine would press through as she felt the chill of the water creeping into her bones. Her request for a story pulled up a saucy sailor's tale, which made sense when that was what she was filling her head with. The choice did make Sabine laugh, at least. "Please share this ship's sexy details." Even an ace like her could appreciate the scandal, though if she were the captain, she would be throwing some horny subordinates overboard.

The storytime did its job, keeping them both mentally occupied until Sabine unlatched a big crate and found deflated plastic. "Hey, I think I found it!" She pulled the large amount of plastic out, carefully avoiding any chance of tearing it on something. "I'm coming back up, just hold on and we're almost out of here." Which was good, because as she waded back with the plastic trailing her, the water was up to her chest.