Rescue

[Admiral Hart]

"Okay, people. Even though this is the easier of the two rescues, we're going to need careful planning." Hart said in the war room. "And subtlety."

---

The hover truck pulled up to the gates of the facility, a UE logo emblazoned on the side. A holographic view screen appeared next to the driver side window, the face of a young guard suddenly appearing.

"Ident card?" He asked. The driver rolled down the window, revealing herself to be Jane.

"Oh, darn, I seem to have forgotten it." She said, pouting. "Is there any way I can get in without it?"

"No card, no entry." The bored-sounding man replied. "Please turn around and go back the way you came."

"My boss' gonna kill me if I don't get this stuff in here. C'mon, please? I'll make it worth your while." She said suggestively.

"Well...uh, I, Sorry, but rules are..." He was interrupted when Jane lifted her shirt at the guy, revealing her complete lack of a bra.

"Well, uh, just this once, I guess." He said quickly as the gates opened.

---

"We're going to need spot on intelligence and perfect timing. We can't afford to make any mistakes here."

---

After having incapacitated the guard who'd showed up to get his "reward" from Jane, Dane and Morgan slipped quietly through the halls, the weapons expert with an oversized weapon in each hand, the First Mate with a pair of dully glowing gravity knuckles.

They moved delicately past patrols, every motion quiet and controlled, until they reached the high-security area that Cassi was sure to be being held in.

"Ready Dane?"

"Yup." He said, grinning ear to ear. He then stood up, turned the corner, and opened fire on the guards.

In the next moment, he was running full tilt away while nearly the entire base chased after him, cackling like a madman and firing indescriminately over his shoulders the entire time.

---

"Then again, stealth is boring."

---

Morgan crept up on the room where Cassi was, according to Madame A's intelligence, being "re-educated" in. He made a fist and, with one powerful, mass augmented punch, smashed the door open and stepped inside.

The first guard went for a weapon, but a straight jab from Morgan crushed his rib cage. A second started to fire, but was interrupted when the third, an auburn-haired young man, surprisingly enough, shot the guard.

The scientist watching them cowered away. The guard smacked him in the back of the head with the butt of his rifle.

"Morgan...Morgan!" Cassi exclaimed, blood leaking from her eyes.

"Jesus, Cassi. What did they do to you?" He murmured, glancing at the guard again. "Are you goinna be a problem, or are you going to watch my back while I carry her?" The tall man knelt and broke the restraints before lifting Cassi in his arms.

"I'll cover you. But what about the other guards?"

"They're...occupied."

----

Dane howled as he ran into the area the truck had been loaded into. "Hey Elsa, you ready to party?"

"Aye-aye, sir!" The image of the pirate-catgirl said cheerfully as Dane disappeared into the back of the truck. The guards surrounded the entrance of it.

"Alright, you've got nowhere to....oh shit." The lead guard exclaimed as Elsa pulled itself from the trailer.

"I live for moments like this. I really do." Dane said, smirking at the fleeing troops.

[Beau Altair]

Nineteen year old Beau Altair followed the large black man as the pirate ducked back out of the stress lab, Cassiopeia Reyes cradled in his arms. Beau reloaded his rifle with a sharp, expert motion, his green eyes deadly sharp, doing his best to ignore the repercussions of what he was doing.

The military was all he knew. His father was a soldier. His grandfather had been a soldier. He'd joined up straight out of high-school, devoted his life to serving it and the ideals he thought it stood for. All those notions had been cruelly shattered, however, as he'd been forced to watch the treatment of countless children and young teens in this hellish place. They stripped them of their humanity. Treated them little better than animals. Trained them like dogs to bark and heel on command.

And one had hit him much harder than all the rest.

Beau and the pirate slipped down the halls, heading for the exit amidst the various alarms and sirens going off around them. He glanced at the girl clinging to the black man's neck, her head tucked up under his chin, her blood-soaked eyes staring sightlessly at his shirt-front. Cassiopeia Reyes, was her name. Her tortured silvery eyes had eaten at him from the first moment she'd been brought in over a week ago. Even worse as he'd watched what their "training" had done to her, tearing away what little spark of defiance had been in her at first, crumbling it away until all that remained was a terrified, tortured little girl.

Beau hadn't been able to stand himself anymore. He might be throwing away every scrap of life and career he had left, but he refused to become as evil and stained as the rest of the bastards in this place. He refused to watch another ounce of innocence get stolen out of that girl, and stand by and do nothing to stop it. It had been rather easy to get word to the infamous pirate crew to whom she had belonged. One would've thought such a powerful person would've been a little more difficult to get in touch with. Or maybe Hart had been on the look-out for just such an occurance.

Beau had given them the coordinates and as much information on the layout of the facility as he could, and then Hart had told him to stay put and wait. That he'd know when the moment was right. Apparently the door of the stress lab blowing off it's hinges had been the sign he was waiting for.

The two men rushed down the hall, but suddenly Cassiopeia tensed in the large pirate's hold. She started whimpering, her arms tightening near to a strangle hold, her irises beginning to swirl like mini whirlpools of liquid mercury. More tendrils of blood leaked down her face. They both slowed their steps, the black man looking down at his slender burden, expression worried.

"Easy, luv, you're all right."

"No," she moaned, her breath quickening in alarm. "No, Morgan. Not this way."

Beau frowned, staring down the empty hallway. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He glanced back at 'Morgan,' brow furrowed. The pirate also lifted his gaze to the hallway in front of him, then his expression hardened again. He turned and darted down a side hall, off the main passageway, and Beau quickly followed after. They ducked into a doorway on opposite sides of the hall, just in time to miss being detected by an entire strike-force of soldiers who thundered past down the main passageway behind them.

Beau's eyes widened in surprise, staring at the slender girl across the hall. She didn't seem to notice, curling farther into Morgan's hold.

"Two doors to the left," she whispered, eyes swirling. "Two right, four left, and straight out to the Captain."

Neither of them argued with her, moving quickly from their hiding places and following the directions she'd given them, to escape.

[Cassiopeia Reyes-Hart]

Cassi started to cry as soon as Morgan cleared the service door, and the sunlight hit her face. They were happy tears though, relief and thankful elation flooding her body like a tidal wave. Salty tears mixed with the blood still leaking out of her tortured eyes, further staining her face and now the front of Morgan's uniform jacket. She'd feel badly about that afterward, but for right now she was too relieved to be free to care.

Still rather disoriented from the drugs they had given her and her powers activating at random, Cassi wasn't very aware of her surroundings or what was going on around her really, and time didn't have much of a meaning. One moment they were running, ducking gunfire--the young soldier who had fled with them displaying an eerie skill as he picked off more than a handful of their pursuers with deadly accuracy, protecting Morgan's vulnerable back while he ran half-hunched over her. There were explosions, fire and yelling, but Cassi thankfully and blissfully remained largely unaware of it all.

Morgan finally slowed his mad dash near a transport. Cassi managed to force herself to focus enough to recognize the tall red-headed man standing in the hatchway of it, looking torn between elated relief and burning rage. A strange combination.

"Oh Princess," Hart murmured sadly, voice hoarse and aching, reaching out to gently cup and stroke her bloody cheek once Morgan had neared enough to allow it.

Cassi's face crumpled and the girl whimpered the Captain's name, her arms releasing their death-grip on Morgan's neck for the first time since he'd gotten her out of that horrible chair to stretch out eagerly for Jonah instead. The Captain scooped her up in a fierce hug immediately, holding her in a smothering grip.

"Get everybody on board," she heard him bark to Morgan, his voice still rough with pent-up emotion.

And then an indeterminable amount of time later, Cassi came back to herself again, sitting in Jonah Hart's lap, her head resting on his shoulder while the Captain carefully dabbed a wet rag at her eyes and cheeks, wiping away the blood that continued to leak from them. Jonah smiled down at her once he noticed she was coherent again. Cassi glanced around the transport, noting that Jane, Dane, Morgan and the young soldier who had helped them were also on board, most of them gazing at her in varied states of worry.

Her attention was shifted back to the Captain when Jonah suddenly handed her a small silver remote.

"Here you are, Princess. Press that, and it'll send a signal to the Plunder to level that place to the ground. I thought you should have the honors."

Cassi stared down at the remote in her hands, and as they watched, her eyes shifted into a swirl. Slowly, a single drop of blood oozed from one eye and slowly trailed down her cheek like a crimson tear. And then a very small, somewhat eerie smile pulled at her lips.

"You might want to cover your ears," she pronounced to the others, her voice somewhat far away. "This is gonna be really loud."

And then she depressed the button in her hands with a certain unhealthy amount of vengeful glee.

[Admiral Hart]

When Juan and Eugenia Reyes entered their home, they found Captain Jonah Hart sitting in their study with a bottle of their finest tequila in front of him.

Before they coould call for security, he said, "Please, sit down. I've given your hired help the afternoon off."

"What is the meaning of..." Juan started, but Hart interrupted him.

"So, I've rescued your daughter from the torture she was going through in those government labs and I figured, heck, while I'm here, before I bust your other daughter out of Io, I should have a nice, short little chat with you."

"If you think you can just barge into our..." Eugenia began, but halted when Hart pulled out a laser pistol and shot an ancient vase, sending a perfectly round, burnt hole straight through it and through a nearby wall.

"Good, I have your attention. Now, I have the papers with me to make me the legal guardian of Cassi. You're going to sign her over to me, or my close, personal friend, Aphrodite Reed, is going to ruin all your finances and aggressively take everything you own. All in the name, of course, of covering the 'interest' your gambling debts have wracked up." Hart said calmly. "She is mine or I destroy you, in other words."

"Done." Juan said, a bit too quickly. "Here, we sign this, alright." He quickly went through the forms and signed everything that required his name, dotted every i, crossed every t. Then Eugenia did the same thing.

"Good." Hart said as he investigated the forms. He then moved to leave, taking the tequila with him, and then called back. "Oh, sorry, I forget one tiny detail. I'm going to destroy you anyway."

Their faces went white. Mrs. Reyes fainted. "You, you can't..."

"Of course I can." Captain Hart said, smirking as he left the rediculously large mansion. "I'm a pirate."

[Dane]

Dane's grin widened as Elsa's shoulder turents mowed down the guards chasing him, talking great satisfaction in there deaths. The sprite on his shoulder straightened suddenly, she cryed out in alarm.

"Dane! We got incoming! Three battle suits to our left! Dodge dumbass!" and so he did, Elsa's thrusters kicked in just in time to miss a hail of gunfire. The weapons expert sighted his targets, three crusader class battle suits, little new than his, but not nearly as armed as he was. The sprite straightened again. "Incoming transmission. Audio only."

"Unidentified Battle suit, drop your weapons and power down your systems and you will remain unharmed. Failure to comply will result in your termination." Dane sneered.

"To hell with that, what are you 12? This is school yard rules boys, lets play." with that Dane barraged the suits below him with laser fire from his rifle, causing them to scatter. He grinned. He spun Elsa into a dive, aiming for the suit closest to him on the left, firing chaotically around him to confuse and disorient the boy. It worked. The boy froze up trying and failing to move out of the way as he fired two shots that severed both legs, the suit stared up at him as he fired another shot, cleaving the head and causing the suit to power down. Dane grinned wide.

One down, two to go.

"You bastard! Die pirate scum!" came over his radio, Dane dodged in the air, firing the thrusters and sending Elsa into a spin, dodging laser fire and rockets being fired at him. Suddenly Elsa shifted directions and landed on the ground, he ducked behind a tower. A few minutes of pot shotting at the two remaining suits forced one to try and force him out of hiding. Big mistake. Elsa's arm grabbed up the suit, disarming it. Literally before shoving a arm blade into the head, he reared back and jabbed again, severing the other arm.

"That the best you got? I'm guessing these two where your newbies, I'm taking a guess your the leader." Dane taunted to the other pilot. He heard a growl on the other end.

"Don't think I'll go down that easy pup. I'm through playing with you!" Elsa ran out from his hiding spot and watched as the leader started barraging the area with cluster missile fire, Dane rolled his eyes.

Pathetic, he's panicing.

Dane weaved left and right, dodging the mans rocket fire. Before long Elsa was on top of him, laser rifle jambed against the cockpit.

"I surrender! I Surrender! Just leave! Go away!" was the mans panicked response, Dane just rolled his eyes. Pathetic. Dane didn't bother responding, he aimed his rifle a little higher and shot off the suits head, one quick swipe ripped open the cockpit revealing the pilot. Dane smirked down at the scared man and shook Elsa's head.

"Fine a new line of work old man." with that Elsa turned and left the man behind. The sprite jerked suddenly.

"Proximity alert! Dodge!" Dane was already moving when it happened, he knew the old man would try something funny, when he dodged the small laser blast exploded past where Elsa's head was at before. Elsa swerved, her arm came up, a soft clicking sound later a cluster rocket flew out of the arm and smashed into the fallen suit, causing a massive explosion.

Dane shook his head and sighed. Moments later Morgans voice came over the com.

"Alright Dane, you've had enough fun. Get back to the ship." He smirked.

"This is Elsa, where on our way."