Chapter #3A baiting turned bizarre. by: Apollo   Clean hands are your top priority in this situation, all that matters is escaping with not even the slightest blemish to your name, but cooperation and obstinacy both lead to the same end: a day of questioning with the Britannia soldiers. The only way to be rid of such an obstacle is to make an escape, but the Knightmares make for two spectacular reasons why this won't work right away. The only option available is to get them out of their machines, thus applying a wide berth and allowing one sharp turn to free you from their sights. While certainly top of the line war machines, the older models these three were piloting lacked some of the peacetime features of modern patrol Knightmares, such as the ability to sense an object smaller than a compact car (thus why they almost turned you into street pizza).
Hiding your reservations and ulterior motives, you calmly and slowly raise your hands to shoulder level and dawn your best smile, one that can shine a brilliant white light through even Knightmare monitors, all while racking your brain for the right words and lies. Fortunately, the years of practice allow these to come with relative ease.
"Soldiers!" you call. "I'm all too happy to oblige my government and its military, but I'm also a bit of a skeptic. While I'd love to aid in any business concerning the empire, I'd prefer to know I'm actually performing an act for the sake of the country and eradicate my doubts, and it would be so helpful if the large rifles weren't being pointed at me."
"Yeah right!" a voice calls from the right-most Knightmare. The gruff voice and crude accent left little doubt in your mind this was either an Eleven from the ghettos or a Britannia who couldn't afford to live in the affluent parts of Area 11. "You just want us to hand over a reward."
"I'm not even securing the girl, and prior to your outburst I had no clue you even wanted this girl alive, and that may be only a preference. I want nothing for myself, I just wish to know I'm doing the right thing. Please, redirect your weapon so we can talk about this like adults."
"You son of a..." the poor one calls again, evidently offended by something you said. However, this time the one in the middle moves its left arm upwards, defending you from both a rifle assault and another charge.
"All right," a gentle soprano calls from the middle frame. "I don't see the harm in discussing what we can. Lower your weapons, boys."
"But Cindy!"
"No butts, Eleven. Lower your weapon or deal with mine."
The two on the side do as "Cindy" commands, allowing you to rest easier now that you're not staring down their barrels. However, one concern about the Knightmares' design continues nagging at you, clearly plastering your worries over your face and wiping off the smile.
"Thank you very much, but there's one final problem. Since the one on my right seems to have a number of grievances with me, I feel it would be best if his hands weren't on the Knightmare's controls. Forgive me if this is out of line, but perhaps you could exit the frames and allow us to communicate face to face?"
"He's jerking us around!" This time it's the one on the left getting hot under the collar, and you're not too surprised. "All he wants to do is laugh at us and show him we're desperate!"
"Even so," your savior replies, "it's best for Britannia to foster a good relationship with the masses, and the first step to that is through the military's generosity and compassion. History has shown that torture and open hostility have only been useful for making enemies and grinding progress to a halt. He'll be more cooperative if we don't make him an enemy, and we can even ask her to restrain the girl first."
The cockpit of the middle frame opens wide, allowing a beautiful young Britannian to stand upright. Her golden locks cascaded down her shoulders and disappeared below her waist, the angle and frame of the Knightmare preventing you from establishing the length of Rapunzel's hair, but what you saw framed her heart shaped face perfectly and contrasted wonderfully against the slight tan. Her pink lips formed a welcoming smile, and the innocent glint in her brown eyes suggested she hasn't once pulled the trigger in a real combat situation. With the two frames bending to her will and the blue uniform hugging her curvy body tightly, it was almost as if the scene before you was a photoshoot for a print ad endorsing enlistment, and you knew it would win over just about every heart - men off their erotic fantasies and women off their dream of being dominant.
"My subordinates won't emerge until we know we're not losing the girl, so here." While calling out to you, Cindy was reaching into the pockets of her uniform and pulled out something that clanked with each movement she made. It wasn't until she threw did you realize they were two items, two sets of handcuffs. You already had a pretty good idea what she wanted, but she still continued, "Cuff her hands behind her back and her feet together, then they'll step out of their Knightmares."
With a sigh, you kneel down and begin the task assigned to you. While this would only serve to complicate things once you made a retreat and force you to carry her if it became necessary to take her with you, it at least promised you a chance at getting away. The most you could hope for at this point is that you don't need to help this person and that the dragging of your fingers is distorting your fingerprints beyond recognition if you give them the one smelling of pizza. And you certainly didn't want to learn this was some entrapment tactic or a variant of the Milgram experiment.
At least I got what I wanted, you think to yourself while witnessing the two pilots of the flanking frames exit concurrently. The three soldiers road down from their cockpits, happy to oblige but weary all the same. The young Eleven Cindy identified wore a scowl across his face, and made sure to clearly express the sour taste you left in his mouth, and for reasons beyond your politeness - your clothes and the affluence they radiated were almost certainly more fuel for the impoverished Eleven's fiery hatred. On the other hand, his partner, an older Eleven certainly on the verge of retirement from the service, showed less contempt for you and more towards her Britannian handler, almost as though he couldn't believe she's falling for this show of airs.
Much to your dismay, their cooperation didn't come as much as you had hoped and expected. They may have left their the cockpits and stepped on the pavement, but they're not even a centimeter from the elevator that reunites them with the controls, and those are in a terrific state of operation at present. Worse yet, they brought out their assault rifles with them. They're still lowered at the ground, but that's not inspiring much confidence. Turning the corner and escaping is certainly possible, though extremely risky and heavily reliant upon them hesitating of having poor aim, or would be if you didn't have the girl chained up like a common criminal. Her restraints would force her to take baby steps and allow her to be followed more easily than a tornado, and the time it would take you to pick her up and run would eat up all of your time to escape. Leaving her is certainly an option and would give you that time, but you're not in the mood for such a high stakes gamble. The only thing you can do is try to charm them into taking a few big steps away from the machines, or play to their animosity and make them turn on each other like starved and stranded explorers. Either way, you take a breath and focus.
"Now then," you begin, "what has caused you three to come looking for this girl?"
You couldn't explain it, but suddenly something felt different, like the air had gotten thinner or everything was merely an image on a computer monitor. Nothing felt real anymore.
In response to your question, Cindy speaks out, "The girl's wanted on suspicion of terrorist activity."
However, that wasn't the only thing you heard, and the scene before you became more surreal. As Cindy was talking, it seemed almost like she had a second set of lips, a much lighter shade of pink, saying something completely different. It was almost like the dubbing of a movie from the Chinese Federation, but even those still had only one set of lips. Adding to the strangeness was something like a faint echo of her voice saying "The little whore claimed to want some real lovers like us and not some pompous child like you."
Between the prior exchanges with Cindy and the images that border on hallucinations, the bizarre and classless words were enough to make you stagger and arch your eyebrows. You wanted to be enraged at the words and make Cindy suffer for even thinking them, but on the other hand you knew something was wrong and that they were armed Britannian soldiers. You simply had to maintain...
"Like he even knows what to do with a girl!" The voice came from the older Eleven on Cindy's right. Much like before, the scene was trippy to the eyes and a faint echo called out, "There's no need for name-calling, Lieutenant Perry!" However, this time it seemed different, the echo was softer and the second lips were less apparent, almost as though it was coming into focus.
"He may sound like a baby, but he's certainly not one otherwise." Cindy's verbal lashing seemed totally in focus this time, nothing seemed even remotely unusual about the scene to your senses. However, it still made no sense to your mind, it was getting harder to think when these scathing insults, juvenile as they may be, made it impossible to focus your thoughts and approach this predicament armed with only your words at the ready.
"YOU ASSHOLES!" was the last coherent sentence you heard. What followed were grunts and groans mixed in with a hail of gunfire.  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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