Radio Silence (Shade, Fury)

Everyone seemed to approve of their appointed marks as Shade suggested and gave a curt nod to Fury as she took the communicator device he offered to her and Simon. She honestly didn't have a word to say to Simon's fears, because if she allowed herself to dwell on the what if's, her mind would be too clouded by the time they got there, and they couldn't afford to make any mistakes. So with a curt nod to them all, she revved up her bike again as they all headed off to their destination.

But it wasn't that Shade's thoughts never drifted at all. She simply replaced them with random possibilities they may come come across to better prepare herself for the possible battle to come. But nothing could have prepared her for the sight ahead as she slowly maneuvered her motorcycle next to Fury and lifted the visor to her helmet with a trembling hand. With her eyes widened in shock at the blazing scene of buildings and skyscrapers ahead, all Shade could think of was, "How?" How..... with all the defensive technology Esther had.... how could something like this happen?


Thankfully, it was Fury's words that snapped her back to attention and got her to focus back on the matter at hand. She gave him a curt nod before him and Dusty tore off for the Presidential Residence, then switched her cycle into hover mode. In doing so, she could easily slip through the endless alleys completely unheard with the engine now deathly silent and not even touching the ground. Hopefully, she wouldn't run into too much confrontation until she reached the Air station......

As was planned, the Detachment quickly dropped its payload of the massive land-boat that Simon called a "car".

The gleaming, silver monster of a vintage car that was the Laumet Trunade was not all it appeared to be. The body was built to take extreme punishment, to the point that it was a functional tank, while still driving like a car. However, it wasn't subtle.

...This is where Simon's para-magical genius came into play. Pulling the large buckle to his belt out of his pocket, he opened a hatch in a small case attached to the underside, pulling out a card.

These items were Simon's version of Para-Magic. The front of the card displayed an image and data on the spell it was assigned to. The back was mainly dominated by a seal of Balamb Garden. Sliding the card into a slot in the side of the buckle, he pressed down on the buckle.

"CLEAR CAST!" The buckle announced in a tinny voice, as the air around Simon, and his vehicle, began to shimmer, as the vintage car's custom hardtop slid into place. Stepping into the car, Clear Cast came into effect. The Trunade vanished from sight.

(Clear Cast used. Vanish cast on the Trunade, and Simon. -40 MP.)

Smiling at his own deception, Simon turned the engine over, taking off across the Horizon Bridge at a steady clip of 60 miles per hour.

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As Shade, Fury, and Dusty split up, performing their covert operations, Simon, still invisible, brazenly jumped on the freeway, tearing out across the supermetropolis that was the nation of Esthar. Oddly, the freeways were still intact, and maintained by automated systems, making for a dissonantly smooth drive. Focused like he was, he could ALMOST forget he was driving through a warzone. ...Almost

...Unlike Shade and Fury, the destruction didn't surprise him. He still remembered the Horizon Massacre. The day that Esthar burned. In retaliation for somesuch indiscretion, the Fringe brought down the full force of their fleet on the city. ...More than half its population was killed inside an hour. The damage, there, and then, though. had been far worse than what was going on now. ...That fact lightened Simon's mood. It meant that the Fringe force here was exceedingly small. A squadron, or less. ...It meant they had a shot at stopping this, if things didn't change. And, stop it, he would. He'd lost too much to the Fringe to let them win ANYWHERE. He carried a grudge of burning hatred for them, on top of a desire to protect. He had a serious conviction, here. The Fringe were here. And he'd see them stopped.

...Or he'd die trying.

As he found the off ramp he needed, Simon pulled off, starting across the great plains.

"...Good luck, guys." He said to himself.

If he was right, they'd need it.

Fury reached around and slowly pulled The Grievance from his back as he and Dusty began their slow and grueling half-crawl towards the Presidential Palace. If there truly was a hostage situation at the Presidential Palace, then letting their presence be known was not something that would bode well for the president or anyone else in that building. So Fury and Dusty got down with their guns out and painted up for camouflage. Then they began to slowly move across the long abandoned under section of Esthar city. Nothing like crawling through the grime and muck with Dusty to bring back old memories.

"Boss, I thought we were done pulling the shit detail, crawling on our bellies and taking the hard shot?" Dusty whispered as he crawled ahead of Fury to scout the next corner. While he did like to joke around a lot, Dusty was very thorough when it came to security and remaining undetected. It was part of the reason Fury even kept him around.

"Hehehe, you say that like you didn't miss this? I thought you were the one who wanted to get things back to the old ways? Fury hoped over a low barring wall with a soft thud before bringing his rifle up and looking around. The silent, dark streets seemed to reverberate every sound they made ten-fold, but Fury knew that it was really. Just the thought, though, was enough to make Fury want to slow down even more. There was no way they were going to get caught out in the open.


Dusty crouched next to a tall building and began to peek around the corner as he said, "I miss our mission, what we were doing, not how we w-" Dusty cut his sentence short when he saw the checkpoint around the corner. He signaled to Fury that there were at least two Gespers guarding it. Fury nodded and lay down on the ground, slowly shimmying he head and shoulders around the corner. Finally enough of himself was out that he could see the two robotic-looking creatures standing guard with unflinching dedication. Fury whispered to Dusty, "We have a choice, we can either take them out or see if we can find another way around. Your call."

A grin spread across Dusty's face and he whispered back, "Let's kill'em."

Although under the safety of her vanish spell, Shade still kept to the shadows of the back allies as much as possible, keeping an alert eye to any movement or sound. When she came to the end of another alley, she brought her motorcycle to a halt when peering around the corner toward her destination to see several Cyborg soldiers along with a damn SAM08G. Hyne, how she hated those cursed things.... having to take them down before their canon went off.... That wasn't going to make her stealth approach any easier. And she had nothing in her arsenal to short circuit the detour standing in her way.


There was only one other option, and that was going into a form that required far more of her powers than just producing the use of her wings. Problem was, the curse to it prevented her from using those particular powers within her own world to keep the Sorceress powers from being detected. Shyt....." Shade hissed through her teeth as she tried coming up with a plan. She had a possibility, but only one shot at pulling off it off right.


While unsheathing the Wolf's Bane slowly, she mentally summoned her Gryphon crossbow to her left arm. With the Wolf's Bane in her right, she flipped the lever beneath the hilt for the steel teeth to extract all along the sides of the blade. She would have to steer the cycle with her left hand until the precise moment she would need to fire her arrows. But for now, she needed the use of her weapon's Ensnare ability to start off with. There was no rushing this. Shade kept a keen eye over her targets to watch their guarding pattern, then finally ignited the hover mode to charge straight in. Still completely unseen by her spell and the silent approach of her cycle, neither of her targets were aware she was coming straight at them. Finally, with a swing of her blade and another lever flipped, the steel teeth shot out of the weapon and soared toward the tank with their titanium wires. Due to the massive bulk of the weapon, the teeth were only able to wrap around its girth once, but still successfully locked around the SAM08G to immediately ignite the Stop spell attached to it. Shade gripped her sword tighter, using the hold of the weapon upon the target to veer her motorcycle at a sharp turn and halt as her left arm aimed and fired two arrows each into two of the cyborgs eyes as her fifth arrow slammed with a thunk into the last cyborg's forehead.


Quickly dismounting her cycle, Shade knew she didn't have much time to take out the tank before her stop spell depleted. But she didn't want to cause a huge explosion that would warrant unwanted attention, so firing directly into the beam canon was not an option. Knowing the makings of such tech through her training and experience, Shade swiftly leaped and climbed onto the mechanism and jammed her prod directly into the circuitry rather than the energy core. Each arrow was fired in-between the armor slates to rip through and shred the wires and electrical mechanics in order to shut the machine down silently. It took several shots with the massive walking tank being so thick in bulk until it finally collapsed onto the ground with Shade leaping to the ground and quickly scanning the area to see if there was any other potential threat. Currently, the coast was clear, and even though being vanished worked on borrowed time, she conjured the same spell over the remains of her targets in order to buy herself more time to reach the airship docks.

SeeD is, perhaps, the most competent paramilitary organization in this, or any, world. Capable of almost any sort of combat operation, from small, stealth ops like this, to full scale combat. They were the best in creation at what they do. Shade and Fury especially (Simon, too, though, to a MUCH lesser extent).

...That said, Simon was still stunned that this was going so smoothly. By all rights, he should NOT have gotten through Esthar like he did. He didn't expect to get found out, no. However, there wasn't even any suspicion from any of the Elastoid sentrys. It's possible that his Clear Cast was just that good, and the engine noise was drowned out by the sounds of combat throughout the city, but, he'd expected one or two curious stares.

As the massive Lab complex came into view, Simon twitched the servos in his arm, not entirely sure what to expect. As he pulled closer, however, he was stunned to find that his invisibility had failed. Cursing loudly, he activated the com-link.

"Guys, I wouldn't be too dependent on status spells. The forces at the lab have some kind of Dispel system, and, I wouldn't be surprised if the hostiles you're facing have it, too."

Letting the com go silent, again, Simon slammed the gas pedal down, speeding toward the lab, before cranking the wheel and hitting both the standard and emergency brakes, spinning the Trunade about as it came to a stop, kicking up a dust cloud as it did. Rapidly exiting the vehicle, he went to the trunk, popping it open to find his gear within. Throwing his belt on, and engaging the Deling Jackhammer, he stayed in the dust cloud as it settled, expecting to have to fight his way in.

...He was surprised to see the bug eyes of a powered-armor clad Esthar SOldier looking down at him, his weapon at his side, as opposed to in his hands.

"Ah, you must be Simon Crowley. We've been expecting SeeD to turn up."

Fury's hand held the grip of his rifle steady. The barrel of said rifle was resting on a piece of debris that had fallen long ago and was aimed at the pair of Gespers that stood sentry at the checkpoint. Light shone down on the automatons, casting the pair in an eerie light. The blank expressions were made even more terrifying by that pale light. Fury placed the cross-hairs of his rifle on the one to the right. The thing didn't even flinch with everything that was going on around him.

He could see something moving in the shadows behind the duo. It moved with a swift gracefulness that made it hard to decipher what it was until it was right behind the two. The shadow stepped into the light, revealing that it was Dusty holding his silenced shotgun to the back of the left gesper's head. Then, the gesper jerked forward and his front opened up in a blast of machinery and liquids. Just as that one exploded, though, Fury squeezed the trigger of his rifle, sending a bullet tearing into that expressionless look on it's face and dropping it instantly.

Fury looked up from his scope and began to move towards the checkpoint. It was then that Simon's ship re-appeared, flying directly over Fury's head. He looked quizzically at the ship. Apparently, status effects weren't working anymore. Simon's voice buzzing in his ear a moment later confirmed that action. He chuckled to himself for a moment. He didn't need status effects.

Just as he reached Dusty, he got on the radio. "Team two, we've reached the presidential palace. We're going to go ahead and enter it now." Fury turned with Dusty and began sneaking his away towards the front door of the Presidential Palace.

Shade arched an eyebrow at Simon's announcement through her ear and sighed with frustration. As if they needed more aggravation to this plan. Just as she caught sight of another set of guards casually rounding the bend of their stationed post, Fury's announcement rang through as Shade dashed back into the alley to retrieve her motorcycle. With their status magic now impaired, it meant the fallen and dismantled targets she just picked off would be spotted right off the bat by next round of guards already approaching.


It also meant that she and her vehicle could now be seen as well.


With Griever's Rage still in hover mode, the engine was still silenced as Shade whipped right out of alley and straight for the two Gespers now investigating the fallen bodies and shambled tank. After firing the prod section of her crossbow, she was able to hold onto the steering so she could raise her sword and take out the other Gesper guard with her blade as the steel sharp prod sliced through the first one, leaving both robotics to crumble to the ground.


Shade aimed her arm with the stock to recapture the boomerang prod as she continued to speed off closer to the air docks while giving an update through the ear com to the others. "About a hundred yards from the Ship docks and closing in..."

"...You've been expecting me?"

This couldn't possibly be good. This time, he opened the com, and kept it open, in the event something went wrong. ...It'd be nice for them to know where his body was, if it came to that.

However, the Esthar Soldier only extended a hand, waiting for Simon to take it, like there was nothing wrong.

"Mr. Crowley, if you would please come with me? Time is rather short, I'm afraid."

Getting himself to his feet, Simon went along with it. He knew he couldn't fight off the entire force stationed here. And, as docile as the force here seemed at the moment, he knew the entire situation could change at a moment's notice. The soldier led him into the lab complex wordlessly, something which unnerved him.

"So, any particular reason why you were expecting us?"

The Soldier's tone was oddly calm, for Esthar being in the state it was in.

"Oh, yes, of course. About two weeks ago, we recovered an extradimentional ship from the Great Salt Lake, in which we found two entities not fully matching any known morphology. One of which is responsible for the unpleasantness sin the city proper."

As bad as the situation was, Simon could't help but feel vindicated. He was right. This WAS a Fringe incursion. As horrible as this was, Simon knew, now, what he was dealing with. From the sound of the Soldier, it was only a single Fringe unit.

"You read that, you two?" Simon thought, the cognition translated into radio waves, which Shade, Fury, and Dusty would pick up.

"We have confirmation. A single Fringe unit, most likely possessing a formidable loadout suited for warfare in the physical world, as well as in cyberspace. Fury, if I had to take a guess, you'll soon be closing in on him."

...Something the Soldier said, though, still struck him.

"You said you recovered two entities. Where's the other one?"

Just as Simon asked this, the Soldier stopped before a door to one of the lab chambers.

"Ah, yes, the second. She's here, actually. Her efforts are the only reason Esthar didn't go totally dark when the first entity launched his one-man assault. She's just through here/"

The Soldier opened up the door, quickly ushering Simon through. ...He could have never been prepared for what awaited him on the other side.

The lab itself was a weapons development lab. In order to keep the complex appearing dark, most of the complex was running on minimal power. This one lab, however, was running at full capacity. The steel-plate walls dimly reflected the room's ample light, as various assembly mechs were hard at work, on various kinds of weapons.

In the center of the room sat a woman, surrounded by vibrant cyan holodisplays. Though the style of her clothes suggested a scientific background, they were clearly stylized. A white button-up top and white slacks, with a white coat that was as much form as function made up her attire, black knee-high boots covering her feet. Her impossibly long black hair was slung over the side of the large computer chair she was seated in, dazzling blue eyes shining in the light of the holodisplays. Looking up from the screens, she smiled. Since Simon had yet to close his comm-link, the rest of the invasion team would hear.

"I was wondering when you'd show up. I missed you."

...Simon let his weapon fall to the floor, in utter shock.

"...Caroline?"

Fury and Dusty slowly crept into the presidential palace. Curiously, there had been no gespers guarding the front of the building. In fact, they had encountered several gespers already dead out front, clearly killed by Esthar’s security force. Which meant it definitely wasn’t Esthar city doing this and the fact that none of the other countries had the capabilities to overturn this city’s security systems meant it had to be an outside force. The Fringe.

Fury and Dusty both donned their low-light vision goggles and slowly moved through the dark hallways, occasionally finding a dead gesper or a dead security guard. He even ran into a dead terminator unit, its own sword twisted up through its chest. Dusty walked up closer to investigate it when the terminator’s head lurched up and screamed in pain. Dusty just about jumped out of his shoes while Fury whipped around and trained his gun on the cyborg’s head. The being let out a shaky cough and opened its mouth like it wanted to say something, but before it could, it lost power and slumped forward onto its sword again.

”What the hell are we dealing with here, Boss?” said Dusty as he slowly pulled the sword from the cyborg’s chest to allow it to rest peacefully on the ground. Even machines deserved a peaceful last slumber and while he couldn’t make it a proper burial, Dusty was going to make sure he was at least comfortable.

Fury kept watch down the hall. He wasn’t about to let anything get the drop on them. He listened to the conversation between Simon and the Esthar Soldier over the open comm. He hesitated a moment, trying to think of best how to explain it, before saying ”You remember those paramilitary guys we ran into in Bohdum? Well, they are actually more of a time-traveling terrorism group. They’re here now and if this was done by a single person, I am assuming this is a future version of them.”

Dusty let out a long whistle before saying, ”So we’re fighting a guy who can travel through time and bend a whole city to his whim in less than a week?” Fury looked to him suspiciously; he knew a smart ass comment was coming no matter what his response was. He gave him a short, terse nod. Dusty just shook his head as he stood up and walked down the hallway. ”I was unaware we were going to fight you.”

Fury was taken aback by his comment, but quickly shook it off. They were there on a mission and there would be plenty of time to get back at him later. Instead, they continued to wind their way through hallways until they heard the sound of fighting. They quickly and quietly made their way to the sound, only to emerge into a large chamber. On the far side of the room was what looked like a group of Esthar soldiers and a terminator barricaded behind several overturned tables. A large number of gespers were charging the make-shift fort. Fury and Dusty both looked at each other before they simultaneously chambered a round into their respective guns and walked into the room.

"Well, of course it's me, Simon. You were expecting Briar Rose?"

...Considering Caroline had spent ten-odd years as a cryostatically preserved corpse, not only did she look good, she was in surprisingly good spirits. Especially considering the fact that she was leading a vast swath of Esthar's soldiers against the now-Fringe-controlled city. Smiling wider as the holodisplays winked out, she found herself set upon. Simon had closed the distance between them inside of a second, throwing his arms around her.

"Caroline... I thought you... ...How are you..." He said, struggling for words, nearly muted by the wellspring of emotion welling up in him.

"Simon..."

...The palm of her hand then met the back of Simon's head, with a percussive angle. Getting free of the machinist, him being stunned, she returned to her chair, the displays coming back up.

"Come on, get it together. We've got an Elite Fringe Operative, and he's running the show right now. Stop the apocalypse now, heartfelt reunion later."

...Simon had to smile. Of the two, she'd always been the more responsible one. She'd always been the one to keep him honest. Keep him grounded. And he'd been drifting away from that, with her gone. ...She also had a point. As happy as he was to have her back, they had bigger problems. Simon leaned against the chair, putting him back-to-back with Caroline, as his Psycommu kicked in, his orange displays intermingling with the cyan of Caroline's.

At that point, with the two of them at work, several explosions went off across the city of Esthar, drawing the main focus of the city's controlled elements.

"Fury, Shade, countermeasures in the city are down. Status effects should be viable again, fixed defensive measures are disabled, and surveilance systems are partially disabled. Give us time, and we should have the Fringe out the fixed systems, and have them back online for support. The mobile platforms are gonna take us longer, though. Afraid you're on your own, there."

Caroline looked up, out of reflex.

"Simon, who are you talking to?"

Resisting the impulse to facepalm, Simon patched Caroline into the communications uplink. They could now, easily, hear her, too. "You got Shade on the line, Caroline. Fury, too. ...You don't know him."

"Right, got it, Simon. Hey, Shadey! Um... Alright, if you're headed for the airfield, be careful. Picking up a Mobile Type Eight in the vicinity."

Meanwhile, as Caroline dealt with Shade, Simon pulled up active security feeds in the Presidential Palace. He still couldn't get any visuals on the deepest parts of the compund, but, what he could see unnerved him.

"Alright, Fury, I'm sending data. If you like, CRAIG can patch directly into the system. He'd be able to access the local network, so he can probably do more good than us. From what I'm getting from here, though, once you get past the Gespers outside, the actual Palace complex is devoid of hostile activity. ...Tread lightly, guys, this reeks of 'trap' to me."

Shade already learned her status spell was disengaged the hard way just when Simon's first warning cracked through the static of her earcom. Just as his words reached her ear, she found her body unexpectedly thrown back off of her hover cycle to soar through the air until her back slammed into the road and sending her form into a a chaotic roll. As quick as Shade was, it still took a few seconds for her to regain her bearings and scramble through the pain from being thrown from a high speed bike, but by the time she got her knees, Shade was snatched up by the arm by one of the Gespers as a Cyborg aimed it's weapon straight at her chest. Luckily for her, rodents managed to fit in small places, and Skittles was quite the small framed squirrel, especially when he was transformed into a household fly while following the team the entire time.


Seeing his Summoner in a bit of a pickle, Skittles tiny buzzing wings went into nitro mode as his body twirled into its tornado maneuver as his shape transformed into an identical Shade just in time to soar through the air and distract the Cyborg for the moment needed before it fired to collide with the enemy, tackling it to the ground successfully. As Skittles disarmed the foe of it's weapon and used it to blow a hole through it's chest circuits, Shade hoisted herself up while still within the Gesper's strong hold for the steel toe of her boot to slam straight through it's engorged eye socket. It was enough to get her arm released as the robot staggered back for Shade to finish it off with an immediate slice of her sword, sending its robotic head to fly off like a volleyball and crash into a wall while its body collapsed to the ground with flashing sparks protruding from its neck.


She turned about to see Skittles still in his form looking every bit as herself in every single detail, save for one thing. He wore a wide cheesy smile while bobbing his head erratically up and down for he knew he did a splendid job, even though he could only speak in squirrel chatter. Having no time to scorn him for the goofy expression, Shade simply motioned for him to follow, keeping her voice low so not to signal anymore enemies to their location. "Back to being insect, Skittles.... we don't want the surveillance cameras giving away your tricks..." Within a second or two, Skittles twirled wildly until he was now a wasp, keeping close to Shade as she pressed on closer to the air docks while fiddling with her earcom that chose to throw a fit due to her crashing fall from her hover cycle.


Now lifting the vehicle from the ground, she wasted no time brooding over the damage, but breathed a sigh of relief when the engine kicked in. Now on her way, the static crackled loudly against her eardrum again from the com device still strapped to her ear. She couldn't make out the words, but Shade was able to determine that it wasn't Fury or Simon's voice.... this one feminine, but whatever was being said came out garbled. It wasn't until Shade rounded the next corner and came to a skidding stop that she now assumed what the voice was warning her about when face with a Mobile Type Eight directly in her path. "Well this is gonna suck....."

Fury kicked the shell of a gesper that was riddled with holes as the small security team came out from behind their cover to meet Dusty and himself. The gespers had been too focused on killing the security team to even notice the two ghosts who had come in behind them and swiftly took them out. The cafeteria was torn and scarred from the fighting and the soldiers looked like they had gone through hell and back. Dusty had hopped over the cafeteria bar and was securing the kitchen area while Fury approached the soldiers.

Just then Fury's ear sprang to life with the sound of Simon and a woman talking to him. He just shook his head at the warning and sighed. Right. 'Palace complex is devoid of hostile activity.' Thanks boy-wonder. he thought as he picked up the severed head of a gesper he had just killed. He pressed down on the "talk" button on his communicator and said, "Simon, check your readings again. We've been inside for the past fifteen minutes and we've run into more gespers inside than out." He looked to the security team's leader and finished with, "And I don't think we'll be needing CRAIG for this one. Raven-1 out"

Fury turned the communicator on mute and then approached the terminator unit that was getting his men together and checking them for damage. The unit's armor was blown off in places and both flesh and wiring could be seen beneath the blackened scar points. The terminator looked up to him as he approached. "Thank you for your help. I don't know if we would have made it without it."

Fury nodded to the man. "No problem. Do you need any help with your men?"

The terminator shook his head and said, "No, we'll be fine now. We just have to regroup before we get going to the president's chamber."

Fury took a seat on a nearby stool and stopped to catch his breath. He shook his head to the terminator unit and responded, "Don't worry about the president. We'll get him. Just tell me everything you know about the enemy between here and there as well as how we should get there and then you sit tight with your men. Moving them now would cause more harm than good."

The Terminator paused for a long moment, as if he were thinking about defying Fury. Finally he spoke, though. "Right. Well, the gespers have pretty much moved out of the palace to clear the city. There are still a few as you can see, but for the most part they are gone. What you are going to have to worry about is the other terminators. Some who had more robotic parts than human parts were hacked alongside the gespers and other robots and are now serving the man who came out of the crash. As for how to get there," the terminator pulled out a small holo-map. He drug his finger across it, drawing a path through the hallways. "That path should take you there with the least resistance. It was the path we were going to take."

Fury stood up and shook the cyborg's hand before grabbing his assault rifle and heading for the door. "Thanks for your help. Stay safe. Dusty, let's go." Dusty's head shot up from behind the counter revealing the twizzler hanging from his mouth.

Just as they were about to leave the room, the terminator spoke up again. "Wait! Who are you guys?"

Fury turned around and said, "It doesn't matter. We were never here."

"More Gespers in than..."

Simon actually chuckled at that, realizing his mistake.

"You clever little sneak!"

Looking more closely, Simon found his mistake. The Fringe Operative had managed to create a looping stream of sensor data. He'd hidden his tracks well, too. You'd never find tvidenc eof tampering, unless you were actively looking for it. Standing back up, his displays shutting off, he headed for the door, grabbing his shotgun.

"Simon? What're you doing?"

Slotting the shotgun into its bracket in the arm frame, Simon looked back.

"Caroline, I'm pretty sure we've done all we can, here. It's time we take the fight to them."

Caroline's own displays shutting off, she sighed as Simon headed off. She loved how impulsive he was, even if it left her to do most of the planning. ...Granted, Simon had his moments, but, he was definitely the more active of the two. The difference between a war strategy and an Indy Ploy. The two of them walking the halls, back to the Tempest, she pretty much confirmed that the Indy Ploy was going to be the case.

"So, do you have a plan?"

Tweaking the shotgun as he walked, Simon responded.

"Actually, yeah. Fury's dealing with the Operative, and Shade's trying to secure the Airfield. I'm thinking Divide and Conquer"

"...So, we're just running in and hoping we don't get shot?"

As the two exited, the deep rumble of the Detachment's engines could be heard in the distance.

"Of course not! I'm going with the Detachment, to secure the Airfield with Shade's help. With the ensuing chaos and destruction, you should be able to pretty much just drive up in my car, and just walk in to support Fury."

Caroline smiled. This was classic Simon. Diversion, via Violence of Action.

Simon threw the keys to Caroline, moments before the gravity field of the Detachment pulled him up to the boarding hatch in the "neck". Smiling as she watched the ship take off, she pulled the car door open, easing into the monster of a car, before taking off, herself, heading for Esthar proper.

...That damn Fringe wasn't gonna know what hit it.