Ilia Amitola is color coded for your convenience (amitola) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-05-16 13:12:00 |
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Well, the Dreams were moving along. The White Fang was becoming more extreme, Blake had just abandoned them and she was rising in the ranks. Ilia wasn’t really sure what to make about it but as she didn’t necessarily talk about the events of the Dreams all that much, she just filed it away and tried to focus on other things. She’d managed to get Blake out of her room, so that was a victory.
With the other faunus at work, Ilia had decided to go grab lunch and looked to Logan’s other stray. Since Jin-Wei’s arrival, Ilia had ended up befriending the other teen. While it had started as just helping her adjust to the place, she had ended up considering Jing Wei as one of her people.
“Wanna go get something to eat?”
There'd been a phone call not too long ago. Jin-Wei had answered it, gotten a puzzled look on her face before she hung up. It had been a wrong number, no big deal, even if she couldn’t remember what had been said or understood why she’d felt a brief moment of cold fear.
She nodded at Ilia, playing with the phone that Logan had gotten her, "That sounds good. I'm hungry."
To Ilia, nothing seemed suspect. All she knew was that she was hungry and she might as well go and get something with Jin-Wei.
“Cool.”
Grabbing her purse and dumping her phone into it, the (currently) purple haired teen headed to the door and waiting for Jin-Wei before locking up and heading towards where a bunch of different restaurants were.
“This place is supposedly good. Though I have no idea what chia seeds are or why they would be put into lemonade.” She had seen the drink, a ‘fresca’ or whatever it was advertised and it just seemed so….ridiculous. But whatever. Californians were weird.
“I’m not sure either. It wasn’t exactly high on the education list at the facility,” Jin-Wei replied. She was curious about Ilia’s hair, though, and kept meaning to ask her about it. “...could you help me dye my hair sometime?”
A bit of rebellion, against her upbringing.
Ilia gave a small nod. It was always weird hearing about the facility but it also seemed to be a sign that there was a friendship there that they could talk or at least reference such things.
“Probably a California thing.” When in doubt, blame it on California and its weirdness. Then there was the question on her hair and she smiled.
“Sure. We can stop by the grocery store when we’re done with lunch and pick up some bleach and you can choose a color you want.”
“Really?” She tried to imagine the reaction of her sisters. It would probably mostly be positive, though one could never tell with Linette. Jin-Wei picked out a table near the back exit. She liked having a view of the place, and the exit was forguiding the target to the extractionpossible escape. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, definitely. It'll be fun.” As they made their way to the table, Ilia didn't think much of the location. It was a good spot for people watching. At least as far as she was aware. “You're welcome, though. It's not a problem at all.”
Jin-Wei felt sorry, for reasons that were hard to place. Like slippery ice around her mind. She checked her phone again, swiped at it then put it back in her pocket. Maybe she was nursing a crush. Yeah, that was probably just it. “Blue or red?”
Ilia was curious about the constant checking of the phone but put it aside. She knew that Jin-Wei had some other friends in the area and so she figured there was just something going on with that. As for the color? “Well I mean, I think blue would look good but it’s your choice for which color you want.”
“I don’t really know what would look good, so I’ll take your advice on the matter.”Jin-Wei looked like she was going to say something else, but the glass in the front of the cafe exploded inward. Men, soldiers, with badges with a bird of prey symbol on them. Jin-Wei grabbed a knife from the table over and flung it, hitting a man in the throat, then grabbed Ilia’s hand, “Back, through the back!”
Ilia was about to reply when suddenly the glass in front of the cafe exploded inward and there was chaos all around.
“Shit!” With all the news of mass shootings and general hate filled attacks, Ilia initially thought it was one of those and was going to grab Jin-Wei’s hand to get them out but it seemed the other teen was already on it, complete with accurate throwing skills. No time to question. Instead she was focused on getting the both of them out of there. Thank goodness for Jin-Wei picking a table near the exit.
They burst out of the door, only for rough hands to grab them and pull bags over their heads. Jin-Wei lashed out, kicking and clawing, and someone tried to wrench Ilia’s arms behind her back.
Ilia wasn’t going down without a fight. She’d had nightmares about this sort of thing - long before Orange County. The KKK weren’t just stories of the past for her. Add in the dreams and her life on the streets and in the gang? Well. She wasn’t going down without a fight. Instead, she used her shoulder to fight against the person trying to keep her arms behind her back to shove them backwards.
The man grunted, and then another tried to punch her in the stomach, but the first’s grip had loosened. “Tase her!”
The sound of a taser crackled to life somewhere nearby.
One thing was becoming clear to Ilia even in the madness, this was planned. And it wasn’t her past coming back to haunt them - mostly because they wouldn’t think to use tasers. Nor would they actually think about throwing a bag over her head. The bag over her head did allow for the punch to land as she couldn’t see her assailants and was unable to fight back with as much accuracy as she might otherwise have.
But it was the taser that made her worried. She wasn’t going to stop though, not until she was forced to. So fighting and blindly clawing at her assailants was her current plan even with the moment of being doubled over from the punch.
The taser crackled again, and someone shouted in pain as her nails managed to claw across his eye. Then they jabbed it into Ilia’s back.
Well, it was a good run while it lasted and she had managed to not go down without a fight. But the taser to the back did what it was supposed to. The shock caused Ilia to arch slightly as the electricity went through her body before she dropped to the ground unconscious.
While other soldiers set about making the event look like Your Standard Angry White Man, Ilia and Jin-Wei were thrown into the back of a van. It was a short ride to an airfield, to a helicopter, from there to another field and a larger plane. It was going to be a long trip.
Ilia didn’t know how long she’d been out. She was vaguely aware of movement but everything hurt. And even in the unconscious state, she was having repeats of her latest dreams with the White Fang and the extremist elements, of Blake leaving. Finally coming to, the teen tried to figure out where she was but all she knew was that her hands were now bound and she still had a bag over her head. That wasn’t going to keep her quiet though.
“Where the hell are you taking us?”
“Home,” A man’s voice said, his accent distinctly Eastern European. “We are taking you home, little bird.”
“No,” Jin-Wei whispered. She sat up straight, shaking her head. “No, that is not home.”
The man smiled, and almost said the code words to fully wake her up. Two turtle doves will show thee, where my cold ashes lie. And sadly murmuring tell thee, how in tears I did die. But when he did, he would ask Jin-Wei to name her.
And somewhere, deep inside, Jin-Wei had already chosen Ilia’s name. Wren.
Ilia growled at the comment. One because she didn’t like being spoken to like that, but also the fact that she and Jin-Wei had been kidnapped and she had to wonder if this was tied into why Jin-Wei had come to stay with them at Logan’s in the first place. He had said not to startle her and whatever was happening, the way she was reacting…
So Ilia moved to lunge forward in the direction of the voice. Not that it would do much good since they were obviously in the air and in transit. But Ilia was always quick to fight even with the odds severely against her.
The man cursed, grappling with her and trying to get her back in her seat. “Little bitch! They’re going to enjoy breaking you.”
It was like something out of a cheesy 80s action movie.
If she was scared, Ilia didn’t show it. Instead she struggled and used whatever leverage she could get to fight back even as she did end up back in her seat. She didn’t know who they were or why they wanted her. All she knew was that she refused to go down without a fight.
“Stop resisting!” Jin-Wei sounded so tired and broken as she pleaded, “You’ll only make it worse. We are weapons, and they are the ones that pull the trigger.”
“Like hell.” Ilia refused to be anyone’s weapon. She’d already done that, she could see it happening in her Dreams and she refused for that to be the case here and now. Like. Hell. But there wasn’t much she could do once she was forced back into her seat.
Jin-Wei fell silent, and it seemed to say ‘maybe fight later’ but she couldn’t say that outloud. She slumped in her seat, hanging her head.
The man snorted, playing with what sounded like a knife. “I hope you like the cold, little bird. And I hope you like the sun. Where we are going, there is no night this time of year.”
Thank goodness for the fact that her chameleon features hadn’t crossed over since the cold would be a really bad mix. But she was taking what Jin-Wei was silently saying to heart. She’d fight when they had more room to. She could do that at least.
Still she was getting pissed off about being called a little bird.
It was a long, gruelling flight on the noisy cargo plane, nearly 10 hours as the plane had to take a less than straight route to its destination near Pevek, Russia. They were fed at hours 3 and 7.
The landing was rough and bouncy, and when they came to a stop Jin-Wei was almost grateful. They were marched down the runway into near freezing temperatures. The man said, “There’s a poem I enjoy, for moments like these. It is a bit like editing a story, to replace what you do not want, with what you want. Two turtle doves will show thee, where my cold ashes lie. And sadly murmuring tell thee, how in tears I did die.”
Jin-Wei stiffened, her eyes darkening and growing hard. Someone cut her bonds, and removed the bag over her head. She walked over to Ilia and pulled the hood from her as well. The sun was bright overhead, and overlooking the frigid arctic ocean was a large, imposing building. There was, perhaps, a flash of something in her eyes. Apology, regret, fear, “Welcome to the Red Room, Wren.”
Ilia’s muscles felt like they were completely rigid from both the bonds and being on the plane for so long. While she had initially bit at the hand that tried to feed her, it seemed that she had been unable to keep from eating whatever it was they were being fed.
The landing made Ilia almost think they were going to die on landing but that wasn’t the case and okay….the asshole with the knife had been right about the cold. Shivering, she was aware that something was going on and then suddenly there wasn’t a hood over her head and the teen squinted as her eyes adjusted to the brightness. But when her eyes adjusted and she saw who was in front of her?
“Jin-Wei, what’s going on..why….”
She couldn’t wrap her head around what was happening. She had trusted the other teen, had befriended her. And she was behind this? She was being used all over again? She suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe, like everything was closing in around her. What was happening?!