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Old 02-26-2017, 11:35 AM   #33
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Lived in Your Chess Game

We've moved around enough boxes for all of us get through to the basement, but moving further will require either some heavy lifting or crawling over boxes. O'Toole and Dr. Anderson immediately start pawing through boxes. Taylor is pacing around in the small space, trying to move his left arm around nonchalantly, obviously in pain, but trying not to show it. After a while, he spots a first-aid kit and digs through it, tossing away aspirin and paracetamol until he finds some ibuprofen, which he washes down with bottled water. Then he moves over to Sherilyn Bell.

Taylor [failing to sound casual]: "What was Warden Tyrrell talkin' about? You know, King and Queen?"
Sherilyn [giggles]: "Oh, he has some pretty wild notions. Wants me to be his Queen." [tosses her hair, strikes a pose]
Sherilyn: "I'm abdicating, though. This place is a lousy kingdom."
Col. Burr: "We're going to need some answers, Ms. Bell. We need to know how you affected the minds of the guards."

Taylor snorts and looks incredulously at Col. Burr. Then he looks theatrically back at Sherilyn Bell, starting at her feet and taking in every delicious inch of her youthfully ripe, seductive beauty as she leans salaciously against a pile of boxes while fluttering her eyelashes. Taylor looks back at Col. Burr with a raised eyebrow.

Taylor: "Would you be a married man at all, Colonel?"

Burr colours and falls momentarily silent. Sherilyn Bell, however, apparently has no concerns about continuing this line of speculation. Sherilyn: "I just prodded the insides of their heads until I found something that made them flip out in interesting ways. Would you like me to show you?" She glides toward Col. Burr wiggling a finger mock-threatheningly at his head. Taylor moves between them and surreptiously grabs Sherilyn Bell's arm, giving her a warning squeeze.

Taylor [to Burr]: "She's just talkin' mind-games, Colonel. Girls been playing them a lot longer than Army Psyops."
Col. Burr: "Mind games? She's got a platoon of men kidnapping federal agents, trying to kill us."
Taylor: "Warden Tyrrell been doing that, not her. A-speaking of that platoon of men, Colonel, you're our best at sensitive site exploitation. Might could ya find anything that would be of use to us? Put together useful stuff we need, med kits, NVGs, web gear, and maybe try to find out what all this is for."
Taylor [to Bell]: "Sherilyn, I'm fixin' to take a look upstairs, find out if there's someone who can hear us. Could you come with me, show me what you know of the layout?"

Col. Burr looks furious, but can't deny that there is merit in going through the boxes and he'd be the best person to organise that effort. Taylor drags Sherilyn Bell along as he crawls on top of some boxes and starts crawling over them to reach the other side of the basement. Sherilyn moves nimbly along with him, taking care to remain close enough for him to be acutely aware of her body.

Sherilyn [throatily, in Taylor's ear]: "I've never been in the barracks, as I said when Mr. M. first mentioned them. So you must want something else..."
Taylor [in her ear]: "Stop. Just stop, Lynnie. You cain't do what you're doin' with Col. Burr. These ain't nice people. I'm not with them because I trust them. I jes' don't see a way for us to survive if we fight them now. And if you scare them, scare him, well, they gonna kill you, Lynnie. You realise how awfully scary mind-control is to politicians and generals? If you can do anything in the same ballpark, even the same sport, Lynnie, no one can ever know 'bout it."
Sherilyn: "All right, Chasie. You know, it's so sweet, how much you care. But if they're so bad, why don't we just leave them?"
Taylor: "Ain't any way for us to get off this island alone. Even if'n we did, it's a bad idea. There are thousands of people trained like me working for the US government. Ain't no life, being hunted. When they caught us, they'd kill us. Kill you. Or put you back in a place like this. Maybe worse. Please, trust me. Lemme help you have a life out of this hell. You deserve one, Lynnie."
Sherilyn [apparently moved]: "Okay. Of course, I trust you. You'll protect me, Chasie dear."
Taylor: "I will. And ter show you trust me, you'll stay right here while I go up the stairs. Out of the line of fire."

Sherilyn pouts, but nods. Taylor motions to Burr and O'Toole to come join him in support. He doesn't wait for them to crawl over the boxes, though, and stalks up the stairs. When he gets close to the stairwell on the ground floor, he can hear some voices upstairs, probably in the dining hall. Taylor estimates that it's only two voices and glances back to see how long it will be until he has support. Burr and O'Toole are still far off, but what Taylor mostly notices is that Sherilyn Bell is only four steps behind him. He sighs, but can't help but be impressed with how close she got while remaining undetected. Even looking straight at her, he doubts that anyone not using night vision would spot her in that shadow. Sherilyn notices him watching her and mouths: "I want to help."

Taylor is about to reflexively order her back down, but stops himself. She has at least the same amount of basic training as O'Toole and if she's still even a little bit of the person she was seventeen years ago, Taylor frankly trusts her better at his side than some rookie cop whose qualifications over her boil down to gender. Denying her agency while her life and her freedom are at risk should he fail comes from a backward, chauvinistic worldview, like the one of Cory Earl Taylor, bigot, bully, sexist and less-than-beloved father. Taylor nods respectfully to her instead, giving her a military hand signal to follow him closely in support.

They stalk up the stairs, pausing on the ground floor only long enough for Taylor to decide that no one seems to be down there, moving on up to the floor with the dining hall. At the top of the stairs there is a door. It's closed, but not locked. Taylor opens it swiftly, but as silently as he can, and moves inside. On the other side of the dining hall are two guards playing cards.

One guard notices the door open and starts sliding his chair backwards, clearing space to reach his pistol. At a flat sprint, Taylor has reached him before the guard finishes drawing his weapon. A hard tackle with a baton in front knocks the guard down in his chair and snaps his weapon wrist with an audible crack. The other guard gets an elbow to the side, which makes him gasp, but the ballistic vest he is wearing robs the blow of most of its force. Taylor then stomps on the abdomen of the guard he knocked down, causing him to cramp up and start vomiting.

Sherilyn Bell is staring intently at the less injured guard, who seems to be trying to scream. Instead of pressing his body alarm, drawing a gun or even moving away, the standing guard tries desperately to loosen his duty belt without touching his gun. Guard: "Get it off, get it off!" When Taylor moves behind him to choke him out, unconsciousness appears to come as a relief. Taylor gives Sherilyn a thumbs up and mouths: "Wow!"

Taylor scans the upper floor for other threats and moves quickly to secure both guards, kicking away their weapons, alarms and radios. As Taylor picks up one M9 on the foor, he notices Sherilyn Bell langorously bending down for the other gun. She's a bit out of breath, bee-stung lips slightly parted, chest heaving with rapid gasps and her eyes are shining with excitement. Taylor tries to focus on the issue of the weapon rather than wondering about her response to the adrenaline or acknowledge how much she's distracting him from the serious danger they are in. Fortunately, Bell seems not to notice him staring or the guilty way he looks away.

Taylor [clearing his throat]: "It ain't fair, nohow, but no way are Col. Burr and O'Toole letting you keep a gun. Willya give it to O'Toole? For me? They'll trust you more if'n they don't have to take it from you."

Sherilyn nods reluctantly and moves to fetch the others downstairs. Taylor starts to secure the two guards, using Israeli handcuffs they had on their duty belts. When she comes back up with Burr and O'Toole, she's not holding a gun and O'Toole has it in his hands. Taylor looks down at the gun in his own belt and then back at O'Toole.

Taylor: "Are we gonna have a problem, Agent O'Toole."
O'Toole: "Not for tonight, Taylor. But remember, last resort.

O'Toole is still really tense after having seen Ms. Bell come downstairs with a gun in her hands. For a moment both he and Col. Burr had been sure she was about to shoot them. She'd given it up cheerfully enough as soon as O'Toole mentioned it, although she couldn't resist a teasingly flirtatious caress of his hand as she handed it over.*

*What us players know, but not the characters, is that when Sherilyn Bell touched Agent O'Toole this time, she succeeded at intuiting what his greatest desire is. As O'Toole has Obsession (Find out the truth about my father and my powers), Ms. Bell somehow realised that O'Toole believes Raul Vargas to be his father and would do anything to find him and be able to talk to him. This is extremely interesting to her, not to mention potentially very useful.
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Last edited by Icelander; 03-09-2017 at 12:21 PM.
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