❄️❄️❄️Frozen Fractals❄️❄️❄️ (show_yourself) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-01-22 19:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, dan smith, elsa of arendelle, ozma, pyrrha nikos |
“How do you wanna go about doing this?
Who: Team PODS (Pyrrha, Ozma, Dan, Sawhorse) and Elsa
What: Rescue
When: January 12, early morning
Where: Aspen
Rating: PG-13 for violence and abuse mentions
Pyrrha knew what it was like to love someone and let them go, but she’d been the one who’d died, who’d left Jauna behind. And she’d seen what that had done to him in the waking world; she’d be damned if she let Weiss go through that.
So she was more than eager to put her dream skills to use for something good. She looked at team PODS, shifting around as she got used to wearing her armor. Her spear and shield, at least, felt good.
“So what’s the plan?”
Between his Dreams and the occasional insanity that the place he called home went through on a fairly regular basis, Dan Smith had thought he’d seen everything; that nothing would surprise him anymore. He’d also thought that he’d left behind his life as a black market “fixer” in favor of being a bar owner. He was wrong on both counts.
Less than a week ago, he’d had his first ever face-to-face meeting with his former information broker, who told him in no uncertain terms that he would be assisting in a rescue mission. No room for discussion or debate either. Qrow had made it very clear that Dan owed him for a couple of past favors and he was calling in that debt. Dan had been given a few details about where he would be going, why and with who. Everything seemed fairly straight forward, more or less. What Qrow had neglected to mention was that one of the members of Dan’s new team was an honest to god living sawhorse, named appropriately, Sawhorse. As he stood with said team, Dan was starting to think that by the time this was done Qrow was going to owe him a favor or two.
Before he could get those favors, though, they needed to actually rescue the poor girl being held prisoner. He glanced at his watch. They should be receiving word that the SDC corporate offices were on fire soon. “Once we get word from our colleagues that the first phase is set in motion, we can get moving too. According to the building’s plans there’s an entrance on the east side that has a security blind spot. That’ll be our entrance point. Once inside, we’ll have to figure out where they’re holding Ms. Arendelle. Place is bigger’en I expected, but I’d be willing t’ bet they’d be keepin’ her somewhere she’s not likely t’ be seen. Below ground, probably.”
Ozma was beside the Sawhorse, hand resting on his ‘mouth’, a slit in the wood that formed his face, so that he wouldn’t make a smart ass comment while they were figuring out how best to go about getting Elsa out. She didn’t have any armor or weapons (unless you counted Sawhorse) but she had a little bit of magic, and her Powder that she could use to get them some more allies tucked away in a pocket of her jeans.
“And probably with a lot of insulation between her and the piping in the walls to limit her being able to pull on the water in them easily.” She added quietly. “We should also probably be expecting lots of guards which - steer clear of his hooves. He has a lot of strength despite his size but aim leaves a bit to be desired.” She said moving her hand from his mouth. “Anything you’d like to add before you have to muffle again?” She asked, looking down at him.
“I’ll carry her out. It’s what I’m good for.” The Sawhorse said, sounding a bit grumpy about it.
The sawhorse wasn’t the weirdest thing Pyrrha had ever seen. She was actually more perturbed by Ozma; her name was too close to Professor Ozpin and she was smart enough to make the leap to the Wizard of Oz from Ozpin’s choice in decor and color. But at least Ozma wasn’t going to offer her an impossible choice, right?
“Would they even know she has powers?” She asked, floating her spear around, then spinning it and transforming it into a rifle, and back.
It turned out they didn’t, but had kept Elsa drugged to keep her in line. Elsa had been forced to watch Weiss’s engagement, and had been occasionally subjected to torture that she hoped Weiss hadn’t been forced to watch in turn.
Over the course of the month, she’d managed to slow some of the drugs that were going into her body. She was still slow and dizzy and the drugs were keeping her anxiety levels down, but she thought maybe she could walk.
Her eyes drifted to the camera that was always watching her, and frost formed across the camera lens, the temperatures in the room she was kept slowly lowering.
Back outside the compound, Dan double checked the rounds in his gun -- a beast of a weapon affectionately (if not very creatively) known as the Demon Gun in his Dreams. Very fitting for someone with “Hellion” as an alias. Dan’s other standby sidearm was tucked securely in a holster under his arm, but hopefully he wouldn’t have to use it. “Neither Schnee nor his goons be on the network,” he said off handedly. “So it’s doubtful they have any clue ‘bout her powers. Which will only work in our favor, provided she be in any condition to put up much of a fight.” However, considering PODS was on this rescue mission in the first place, Dan highly doubted it. Otherwise, Elsa may just have saved herself long before now.
He snapped closed the revolver’s cylinder and glanced at his watch. The Schnee corporate offices should be ablaze by now. He looked over at Pyrrha. “You got that scroll-thing withya, aye?” he asked. “Give it a look and see if the fire teams checked in.” He then glanced at Ozma and Sawhorse, “Once they have, we’re gonna move. You ready for this? ‘Cause once we start this, we’re in it to the finish.”
Now that they were actually getting ready to move, Ozma’s nerves had settled to something that resembled calm. It was almost that same state that she’d always found herself slipping into for shoots where nothing would rattle her. “She’s careful about using them and I don’t think Weiss would have let it slip that she did.”
She made sure the powder was easy to get out of her pocket at Dan’s question, nodding. She was here mainly to provide magical backup and she knew it. “I’m ready. And I won’t ask him. He’ll just give something horrible.” She looked down at Sawhorse. “Whatever you need to say get it out before we go through that door. And you better not break your ears again.” She was pretty sure that if he could have rolled his eyes at her he would have but instead he just walked his way up close to the door to wait.
“Fire teams checked in,” Pyrrha said, before sliding her Scroll into her pouch and pulling her shield off of her back. She rolled her shoulders, bouncing to make herself limber. Once the fighting started she’d let her training and her muscle memory take over, but she was still a little nervous. “Let me go in first. My powers can nullify any weapon as long as they’re metallic, and my shield and aura will protect me if they’re not. I’m bullet proof up to a certain point.”
She shivered as the air fell a few degrees. “I think she might be waking up. We should hurry. I understand she has anxiety issues and I don’t think we want a blizzard.”
A slow cold grin spread over Dan’s features and he nodded at Ozma. He had to hand it to the girl. She was as cool as a cucumber. If Dan didn’t know any better he’d have thought she’d done this type of thing before. Pyrrha too, if he was to be honest. Damn, this was going to be fun!
A glance back at the red-head in armor and he nodded. “Aye, lass. You take point. Ozma, you and Sawhorse follow after. I’ll cover our six.” He lifted his gun over his shoulder – a relaxed stance that had carried over from the Dreams. He too felt the sudden chill in the air, unseasonable even for this time of year. The corners of his mouth quirked slightly. Hopefully Elsa wouldn’t see the three – sorry, four -- of them as a threat. The last thing Dan wanted was to be made into an ice sculpture.
“Alright, Pyrrha. Whenever you’re ready.”
Ozma was glad that she’d decided on long sleeves tonight, even if the sweater was more lightweight than she’d have liked as it started to get colder. “We definitely don’t. And knowing her once she realizes that we’re to help her she’ll probably fit a bit bad about having used her powers in a way that affected us like that.” Elsa had anxiety issues that was true but she was also one of the most loving and caring people that Ozma had ever met.
“It might be for the best if when we find her I go in first if there’s no one in the room with her. Since I know her better than either of you.” Hopefully Elsa wouldn’t be so far gone as to not recognize that it was her.
“You know her better,” Pyrrha agreed. She rolled her shoulders, then thrust her hands at the door. The hinges ripped out and the door thudded to the ground. She leapt in, rolling as she landed, throwing her shield down the hallway. It bounced off the wall and two guards heads before she called it back with her semblance as she ran into the building. All was clear so she called back to the others.
But where was Elsa being kept?
Elsa had landed on the floor, laying there for a long moment as she tried to regain her senses. Carefully, she pulled the IV out of her arm, and pulled herself up by the bed.
One of her guards rushed in, swinging a billy club at her. It hit her in the side and she felt a rib give.
Back at the side entrance things were going….well, not bad considering very few plans survived first contact with the enemy. Pyrrha had taken down their first set of obstacles: the door and the first pair of guards. Ozma followed after with Sawhorse and Dan brought up the rear, gun at the ready, doing a full sweep of the hall behind them as they moved. His senses were sharp and he listened closely for sounds that their entrance had drawn attention. The quiet that met them in the hall was the eerie type, the kind that accompanied a stillness before an all out storm. The corners of Dan’s mouth quirked again.
“We got the advantage fer now,” he said over his shoulder to the rest of the team. “Best we take advantage of it while we can. Pyrrah, you got the plans for this place, aye? Any part o’ them look weird -- ”
The sound of a door opening caught Dan’s attention. He whirled towards the door on his left in time to see another pair of guards enter from another door on the far side. Dan sucked in a breath and pinned himself to the wall around the corner so as not to be seen. He signaled to Pyrrha and Ozma they had company coming.
“...its probably just an electrical fire or something,” the first guard said to his partner. “The old man’s just being paranoid.”
“How many men does it take to guard a girl anyway?” The second guard asked. “She ain’t going anywhere.”
Well, wasn’t this fortuitus. Dan motioned for Ozma and Pyrrha to come closer.
“There is an area of some concern,” Pyrrha said, pulling out a folded up map, unfolding it, and pressing it against the wall so they could all see.
“This area here was not in the public blueprints. There appears to be a false wall and hidden stair case. If Elsa is anywhere, that’s my bet.”
Ozma grabbed the Sawhorse by one of his ears, pulling him in close to her as she took shelter against the wall beside Dan, her other hand over her pets mouth. She looked at the map, finding the area that Pyrrha was referring too easily. “And I think that’s where those guards were going and I didn’t see any special locks on the door so at least we won’t have to worry about that right?” Ozma said softly, looking at it as if she was hoping that something in the map would suddenly appear to make finding Elsa easier.
Dan glanced over Ozma’s head at the map where Pyrrha indicated and nodded. A false wall and hidden staircase not on public blueprints. It practically screamed Secret Dungeon. “Think you’re right, lass,” he said quietly. Another glance around the corner to where the guards were. Neither were showing any signs that they were at all aware of the team’s presence. “How do you wanna go about doing this?” He nodded towards the guards, “let those two lead us right to her, or take’em out now?”
“If it’s a regular lock, or one that I can magnetize, I can get us in once we’re in there.” Pyrrha didn’t need a key when she could manipulate the tumblers inside a lock. Even an electronic lock she could probably fry.
Or just bust the door down if it came to that. She peered down the hall, noting frost was starting to run up the walls. “Why don’t we see what the horse can do to them?”
Elsa didn’t want to hurt people. That was the exact opposite of how she wanted to use her powers. And yet she was desperate. Ice impaled her guard through the thigh, holding him in place as she stumbled out of the room she’d been kept. She nearly ran into a second guard, one who’d been a little handsy on occasion. He managed to grapple her, twisting her arm behind her back and slamming her against the wall.
Ozma grinned down at the Sawhorse beside her and gave him a nod as she let go. “Do your worst Sawhorse.” She said softly, watching as he made his way down the hall, picking up speed as he got closer to the guards in front of them and knocking into them. He backed up and kicked out with his front legs, hitting the first one in his knees hard enough to make a cracking sound that Ozma heard and winced because of. He repeated the process with the other guard, this time his kick landing lower, the cracking sound coming from near the shin and the Sawhorse kicked at him again, causing the guard to scream as another break spread through the bone.
“Think you can do that on the door?” She called down the hall quietly as she stepped out from the wall a little bit. If they were going to call for backup they would have at the first strike.
The Sawhorse didn’t even have to turn to look at the door since his eyes were on each side of his head. “I don’t think I could kick the right spot to do anything but dent it.” Something in his tone made it seem like she should have known that as far as he was concerned. Ozma reached out one hand to rest on the wall, feeling the cold running through it.
Dan watched with bemusement as Sawhorse attacked the guards and put them both down within a matter of seconds. “There’s somethin’ you don’t see every day,” he muttered aloud to Pyrrha. Though, for all he knew in her dreams, watching inanimate objects kick the ever loving crap out of someone was something she saw on a routine basis.
Dreams were weird.
Dan stepped out from behind the wall along with Ozma. “Good job, lad,” Dan said to Sawhorse, with a grin. He lifted his gun off his shoulder and leveled it at the two guards on the floor, just in case either of them thought calling for back-up now would be a good idea. “You two just sit tight fer a little bit and behave yerselves,” he instructed them.
Dan noted the frost on the walls and the hair on his arms was prickling, sending goosflesh over his skin. He wasn’t sure what the frost meant, exactly, but it gave him a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. They needed to move fast. “How close are we to that secret room?” He asked.
Elsa pushed back against her assailant, forming an ice club but she couldn’t bring herself to use it.
“Another ten meters.” Pyrrha readied her shield and turned the corner; and nearly ran into Elsa and the guard. She reacted instantly, her shield slamming into the man’s head and sending him flying down the corridor. She caught Elsa as she slumped over. “I’d almost say she didn’t need our help.”
Ozma moved as quickly as she could to Elsa’s other side, putting her arm around her lightly. “Hey. We brought you a ride.” She said quietly, looking at Sawhorse and motioning him closer with her head and then looking at Pyrrha. “Help me get her balanced on him? He offered to let her ride and I’d rather us all be ready if we run into any trouble on the way out.” She looked around, eyes landing on what looked like a billy club and she moved over towards it, pulling the powder out of her pocket and using it quickly, muttering the incantation and smiling to herself as the club stood up on it’s bottom and started making small hops.
Dan hung back while Pyrrha and Ozma assisted Elsa onto Sawhorse. He was the stranger here (stranger with a very large gun) and he didn’t want to risk his presence causing Elsa any more distress than she’d already suffered.
He also didn’t completely trust that the two guards Sawhorse had kneecapped earlier would actually behave themselves. He figured one or two of them would raise the alarm the moment the team had gone from sight. Ah, well, let them. Dan would have been surprised if they’d actually gotten in, gotten Elsa and gotten out again without some sort of hiccup. So while Elsa was hefted onto her noble steed, Dan’s eyes flickered up and down the hall, his gun at the ready.
He was momentarily distracted, however, when a billy club got up off the floor and started hopping along.
Dazed, Elsa stared at Pyrrha and then at Ozma, taking one moment to hug the latter. Before Pyrrha could get her onto Sawhorse, she tested her powers. Sparkling ice danced over Sawhorse, and a saddle and barding made of ice grew around him.
Pyrrha raised an eyebrow, but put Elsa into the saddle. “I think we should get out of here before police or help arrive.”
Ozma hugged her back quickly and then moved to steady Sawhorse as the ice grew around him. “Don’t even think about complaining. We both know you don’t feel cold.” She told him in a low voice. “You made something new.” Sawhorse responded sounding almost sulky. “Yeah well. You won’t exactly be fighting with Elsa on your back and I don’t want to leave us with a defense down so...Billie needed to happen.” She said standing up.
“Agreed completely. Sawhorse...stay with us unless it gets dangerous and then you get her out of here.” She’d have to figure out ears for Billie later. Right now....well hopefully he’d be able to keep straight friends and foes. Ears and eyes could be dealt with at home. Maybe she’d get some of those googly eyes from the craft store for it.
Elsa leaned over heavily on Sawhorse. She was still groggy and exhausted from being drugged for so long, but she glanced back down the hallway. Ice spread along the walls and the floor, pipes started to burst and freeze instantly and the building shuddered as supports started to become brittle from the cold.
Somewhere above them, the floor was moaning with protest. With the way the building was starting to frost over, Dan was less concerned about the police or extra hired muscle showing up and more concerned about the house collapsing on top of them. His eyes followed the ice as it spread out from Elsa, covering virtually ever surface. Dan himself felt chilled to the bone and wished he’d worn something a little more substantial than just his suit jacket.
He called to the small group of friends, which now consisted of a bouncing billy club. “We gotta get goin’. I don’t think this place is gonna last much longer. C’mone, this way.”
“As long as it holds out until we’re through that door I don’t care if it collapses and leaves a hole of dead earth.” Ozma said quietly, standing up and reaching down to grab her new friend by the handle so that it wouldn’t get lost or left behind. Billie still moved in her hand slightly but wasn’t actively trying to attack her so she was taking any chances. And she felt a little better with a weapon in her hand. Something she never thought she’d find herself saying. Or thinking as the case may be. “Let’s go.” She said, willing to follow Dan out while keeping one eye on Sawhorse with his passenger, ready to reach out and give Elsa a steadying hand if it was needed as they made their way back out of the building, trying to ignore the creaking sounds the building made around them.
Elsa held onto Sawhorse, closing her eyes and calming herself as she started to scare herself with what she was thinking. The ice started to melt away, the cold receding, though there remained a short trail of sparkling snow in Sawhorse’s path. But for a moment, just a moment, she’d been prepared to bring that whole building down, out of sheer rage and despair.
“Can’t say as though it’d be a loss,” Dan agreed. He glanced over his shoulder at Elsa slumped over her ice saddle. He couldn’t blame the poor girl for wanting to bring the whole thing down around her. She had been through an ordeal, one that would likely stay with her for a while.
Dan let out a breath and turned his attention ahead of them again. Bringing down Schnee’s posh Aspen retreat wasn’t enough as far as he was concerned. Hopefully whoever had orchestrated this entire mission would put the asshole away for a good long while. Let him squirm in a cell for a while. For now, Dan was content putting a bullet into each of the the knees of two guards who decided it would be a good idea to attempt to stop their escape. It was tempting to put bullets into their skulls too. Very tempting. Dan’s finger flicked over the trigger, but moved away before firing. He’d promised Liv he wouldn’t murder anyone. Despite being pulled in for this mission and despite how good it felt to be back in action after so long, he had to remind himself he wasn’t The Hellion anymore.
Dan sighed and pressed on. Just a little further and they’d soon be on their way back to Orange County.