She's Got Issues - Part Two

Posted on Thu Dec 30th, 2021 @ 5:58pm by Alden Loxley & Alison Bliss & Daiyu
Edited on on Mon Jan 3rd, 2022 @ 3:26pm

Mission: Li Shen's Bazaar
Location: Li Shen's Bazaar - St Lucy's Medical Center
Timeline: November 3rd - Late Morning

After about ten minutes of quiet (the sound of normal conversation within the room inaudible once that outer door was closed) the peace of the waiting room was startled by a blood-curdling scream. It was soon followed by a howl of pain.

"Kan gui!" Daiyu cursed as she came running out of the examination room with blood dripping down her chin like a harpy straight out of hell.

Not far behind her came Dr. Fletcher, grasping her right wrist in one hand in a tight compress. "Seize her!"

At her order, a pair of burly orderlies rushed into the room and intercepted Daiyu not three steps from the exit. They twisted her arms behind her back and carried her away to the back room. For all her kicking and screaming, Daiyu struck nothing but air.

"Two by two!" Daiyu screamed nearly incoherently. "Hands of blue, two by two!"

----

Alison reached for her new SIG taking it out of the box, reloaded, stuck the other magazine behind the belt and then glanced at Alden. Without a word she moved toward the door where they took Daiyu and pulled her old SIG from the holster as well. She was clearly going all in, armed in two guns, ready to kick the door if needed be.

While Alison prepped for a fight, Alden had been up on his feet from the second Daiyu appeared in the doorway. His hand rested ready on the Model B in his holster, undrawn as yet, though his brow furrowed with a deeply felt concern for the younger woman as his ears deciphered those panicked words.

Two by two? What the Dìyù was she on about?!

"It's..." Alden stopped before he finished that unhelpful sentence. It clearly wasn't okay, was it, his brain told him. "Hey!" He called, switching from calm to deeply concerned in two beats of his heart. "Wait right..." He looked to Ali and then opened that private (unlocked) room's door.

Charging in, gun still holstered - this was a hospital after all and current worry centered around restraining an unarmed woman with a history of random behaviour - Alden felt the sudden impact of noise against his eardrums and stopped still. Said noise was felt on a cellular level, hard, heavy and debilitating and as one hand reached for his gun, Alden's other hand went to his nose. Blood?

A quick glance for Alison showed Dr Fletcher on her feet by her desk, Daiyu in the hands of the orderlies and two dark suited men with blue gloved hands. One in deeper barely lit cover at the back of the 'closet' which was clearly a separate exit from this room, and the other barely inside the doctor's examination room. This first man held a thin silver wand in their hand, his face steel.

Which was when that sonic weapon ramped up a notch and Alden dropped to his knees with a bark of pain.

The pain hit her hard. Hard enough that it became even pleasurable for a moment. It all made Alison act on instinct, as she was unable to get a coherent thought. The weird sound bore through Alison's head and muffled the sound of the new SIG P320 in the Nitron finish coming to life for the first time in her hand. The shot went wide, harmlessly hitting the wall and she had no strength to pull the trigger again falling on her knees. Both guns clattered on the floor moment before Alison joined them falling unconscious and the blood started to trickle out of her ears.

"NOOOO!!!" Daiyu's cry became a blood-curdling shriek.

----

Between the sonic emitters and the general screaming, there wasn't much to be heard amidst the medical center inside the monastery. That didn't stop the tink, tink, tink of a small metal object that bounced through the door and laid to rest a few steps away from Dr. Fletcher and her two ominous guests.

"Ma de--"

The bad doctor's words were cut off when the flashbang lived up to its name. For everyone in the immediate vicinity, all sound and general orientation scattered like shadows put to light. A handful of men, three at the minimum, burst through the lobby doors, guns blazing, mouths open, their words drowned out by the hail of lead that filled the space in front of them. No two of them were dressed alike, except for a stark crimson frock each wore around their necks.

With Alden, Ali, and Daiyu on the ground, there was nothing for the thug orderlies, Dr. Fletcher, or the two men in business suits and blue gloves but to succumb to gunfire. The two orderlies were shredded to pieces like pulled pork, their limbs held together more by blood-stained clothing than flesh and sinew. Dr. Fletcher had turned to run, which meant her left flank had been exposed but her right spared. A weak, bloody hand from that right side tried to pull her even weaker body across the floor to the new back door from the medical examination room.

Either through force of will, or more likely neck to toe body armor beneath their suits, the Hands of Blue were still standing. They had been knocked backward and pinned to the back wall while bullets riddled their bodies. The sonic weapons in their hands had been reversed. Pointing to their rear, a press of the button vaporized silhouette-shaped holes in the wall that the gunfire knocked them through. The did not waste the opportunity to flee.

"Get them," said the lead rescuer said to the others, his words barely audible with the echoes of fallen bullet casings clinging to the air.

His compatriots fell into pursuit, their automatic rifles held to their chests like commandos despite their roughneck appearances and unusual crimson frocks.

----

As he approached the people on the ground, the lead rescuer assessed the three individuals with a canny stare. His handsome face which looked weathered by hard living framed steely cobalt eyes. They held no mercy as he looked down on Dr. Fletcher's desperate and futile attempt to flee. When Fletcher slipped in her own blood, the man just scoffed and shook his head.

"Who--who are you?" Daiyu squeaked from the corner, all but huddled into a ball.

The man turned his gaze onto Daiyu. At first his eyes were pools of judgment ready to mete out death and destruction, but when they fell onto Daiyu, they brightened in a stark and sudden transformation from wrath to mercy. Even his stony frown flipped into a wry smile that ruffled his five-o'clock shadow around his chin and mouth.

"Name's Grimshaw," the man said warmly. "And we be Shepherds."

With a quick pull on the hammer of his revolver, the bullet was out of the barrel before the click of the cocking motion even registered. Dr. Fletcher's head made a grisly popping noise from being split like a melon.

"Avenging Shepherds," Grimshaw added. Turning to the prone Alden and Ali, he holstered his weapon. "Nasty business y'all mixed up in."

More gunfire rang back from the holes where the Hands of Blue had retreated and the other Shepherds had taken chase.

----

It hurt. Deeper in his head like some sort of burrowing hangover, it really hurt.

Alden opened one eye with a cautious expectation of who knew what, and through a red sheen he picked up on the headlines of current events.

Dead doctor. Real messy, chunks of brain gristle kinda dead. Live Daiyu. Looked to be in one piece. Beside him and prone like he was, Alison. Some dude with a crimson collar and a gun in his hand who looked like he was talking rather than killing right now, but no words were coming at Alden right. A slow buzz flooded the audio of this crazy reality and reminded him that they'd been hit by something sonic.

The Echo's captain reached a hand to his own ears and came back with blood on his fingers. He could hear, but it was like listening to someone talk from deep underwater, the translation of words slow and syrupy with added wincing and lots of it. Alden blinked, fought through that processing stage of catching up with current events and reached cautiously out to nudge his partner. "Ali?" He asked, his own voice sounding very far away. "Ali."

Ali didn't move, which sent a tidal wave of adrenaline through Alden's mushed up insides. He immediately dropped (or rather slid) into emergency-mode and sought a pulse, well aware just by his current proximity to his best friend's unconscious form that she was in the same trouble he was. Blood at her nose and ears, staining that picture perfect white blond hair. Anxiety flooded him until Alden felt that familiar thump of fingertips against her carotid artery.

"You're alive," he told her. "I gotcha."

From his prone position on the floor, Alden slipped his left arm underneath Ali's slender form and gently rolled her towards him. Lifting her up, she felt lighter in the physical than he remembered, yet way heavier in the emotional. Pulling her close against him, Alden stumbled, balance lobsided and struggling with the motion. He wasn't right, he reminded himself, but...

They were in a med center.

"She needs help," Alden stated, his voice sounding muddier than he remembered and his legs unstable on the even ground. A glare towards Grimshaw and the close grasp of those strong arms told the Shepherd that there was no way in hell this precious cargo was being trusted with anyone else. "I'm gonna get her some help. Daiyu, come with me," he said, clearly and with confidence.

There was already the sound of heavy booted feet echoing in the corridor behind Grimshaw though. At least two sets of heavy booted feet in a familiar rhythm that seemed to signalled a security team of some kind. Of course nothing as fatally vocal as the gunfire they'd just unleashed would go unnoticed for long, even in a station this far out on the Rim, but there was also no telling whose side these folks would be on.

"Karen'll know what to do..." whispered Alden, shifting tactics slowly while his brain taunted him with different information and struggled to wrap around this new set of horrible facts. They were in trouble. Big trouble. And Karen was gone. Wasn't she? "Let's get outta here," he decided, changing his mind and, Alison held still closer, he forged a slower path in the direction of the already exited A-Men, though not before ensuring Daiyu was with him.

They needed a Doc, and Jonas. And, hell, Whit wouldn't go amiss at this point either...

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