"Next up!" Emily cheerily announces as though our grimaces are giving her an immeasurable sense of delight. Oh wait. Yeah she's a sadist of course she's delighted we're all grimacing. I bet she's enjoying this. I can see the same thoughts run through Delilah's head as her face goes from a little pale to an angry red fairly quickly.
"The branch manager. Ellis Argnab. An ambitious middle aged man. Rare for people his age but nonetheless annoying in our circumstances. He's looking to move up in the world and this would be his chance. Apparently getting rid of us" Emily stops her speech to point at herself or more specifically the company badge on her hoodie before continuing.
"Is the task he's been given to facilitate his moving up in the world. Since we are a nuisance and he deserved a promotion for all his hard work they likely thought they'd just give him it if he got rid of us." Emily stops talking to look at Tommy and Tommy smiles at her seeming to realize what she wants before speaking up himself.
"I actually had the pleasure of having a drink with the guy once. Not a pleasant man, but Emily's right. He's really determined to get rid of Frame Products Ltd. In fact he recently orchestrated a plot to get rid of your secret CEO that ended up making her house implode in a mini-black hole. Though I think that was her doing rather than his." Explains Tommy looking to Emily to confirm his suspicions which she nods.
"Correct. Master decided that she'd rather take everyone down with her and installed an implosion device in her apartment building. That likely caused the implosion you're talking about." Emily seemed to have a proud smile on her face while talking about her master essentially blowing everything sky high. Strange thing to take pride in but hey she's nuts anyway.
"You likely won't interact with him much however so he's less important than the head of security. If you do interact with him it will hopefully soon devolve into a bullet ending up in his skull so you don't really have to worry about him. Still we thought we'd inform you all the same." Explains Emily while smiling. Yep she's definitely a sadist. Her smile grows ever more radiant the more murder she includes in her explanations.
"That it?" Asks Marianne in her barotone voice. The emotion behind her comment is hard to grasp. Disappointment or perhaps joy maybe even boredom. Her question however doesn't make sense to the rest of us so we all look at her waiting for her to continue.
"Is there anyone else we should look out for? The head of security is perhaps formidable for you but as a fighter he appears above average at best. Are there any combat related personnel that we need to watch out for?" Asks Marianne. Now I know the emotion behind her voice. It's hope. She's hoping there's someone else strong that she'll get to face.
"Not so much someone but the reason we brought you on is more of a bad feeling we had. They've been preparing something rather large for a long time now and we're not quite sure what it is. What we do know however is that they are clearly expecting backup in some form." Emily explains dropping her smile for once.
Her face is deadly serious and it takes us all aback. All except Marianne who is smiling a little at the corners of her mouth. "We're not entirely sure what form their backup will take but we are certain that it will be a hindrance and we want to be ready for any such scenario. Thus we asked for your help Miss Marianne." Explains Emily sounding like the cunning CEO she's supposed to be.
"I see" that's all Marianne says before she lapses back into silence, inviting Emily to continue explaining the plan. She follows her lead and regains her smile as she talks about the rest of the plan.
"Once you're on the planet Machina. We're going to have you walk up to the Flux building. From this point will be Tommy's job. Dede will wait outside the facility watching the getaway ship with Lumi and looking for any changes in the situation from the outside. The infiltration team will thus consist of Marianne, Amelie and Tommy."
Delilah smiles a little hearing that comment. She's clearly happy with this arrangement. It means she's only a scout and isn't actually in much danger. Presumably Mainframe decided that given Delilah's clear unwillingness it would be best if she took a supporting role rather than a direct one in this conflict.
"Tommy's job is to get you to the employee stairs behind the counter using any means necessary. So long as you do not get caught you're free to pull rank and have the others act out one of your little plays." Explains Emily looking at Marianne and I.
I just nod knowing that she's expecting obedience. Marianne's reaction is only slightly different. "I'll leave the specialists alone to do their job. If you need me to act out a part I'm willing so long as when it comes to combat YOU follow ME." With that comment she nods herself.
I'll admit I was expecting her to put up a bit more resistance to the idea of following someone else's orders since her creed has always been strength beats everything else. Despite that she seems fairly reasonable. Presumably she wants the leader role in combat and is willing to cede just about every other leadership role.
We all nod at her suggestion. She's clearly the combat expert and if she gives you orders during combat there can't be a muddled chain of command or it could result in hesitation and consequently death.
"Once you're in the stairs you'll need to get up to the 10th floor. Then there will be a door on next to those stairs that leads into a hallway. We still have access to the cameras on that floor so making it seem like you're not there won't be much of an issue." Emily continues her explanation once the orders from Marianne are accepted by the rest of the infiltration team's members.
"A little walk down the hallway later and you'll run into a break room. It's usually fairly empty given how little breaks the employees take. This means that there will only be one or two employees in that break room. We will be able to tell you about these people since we have access to the room as well." Emily explains and we all focus on her next words. Clearly we aren't going to the break room for it's intended purpose so what are we doing there? Is the question on everyon's mind.
"Once you're in there you'll be using these suits." Emily then whistles through her fingers. It's a skill most mercs develop over time and is usually used as a signal. Sure enough The wailing of souls from the door rings out over the room once again as they open to reveal a number of robotic constructs carrying a set of what look like upright pods into the room.
Once they set the pods down they leave through the doors and the wailing rings out once more as they close the door behind them. We all watch both confused and impressed by the display of both the tech used to build the robots that can lift such heavy items and the weird contraptions they left behind that have us all curious.
Emily goes to the pods and we all focus on them as she does. They're a shining metallic colour and cylindrical in shape. Similar to the shape of the grav-tube or an elevator design. They're not that large but they certainly seem like they're meant for transportation.
The pods look as though they have a slit down the middle that's likely a set of doors. A few inches from the slit is a panel with a number of buttons on them that flash a bright blue colour in letters we don't actually understand. Presumably this is proprietary technology they're trying to hide using these pods so their security measures must be fairly advanced.
Once Emily reaches the panels she does something with her fingers that none of us could catch and then she moves on to the next pod. She does this for every single pod and yet none of us peak or we do and she manages to hide what she's doing from us.
Once she's finished doing whatever she did to the pods we all focus our attention on her once more and she starts to explain the uses of these pods. "I'm afraid I can't share much about the pods themselves as they are used to hide our proprietary technologies from other companies but what I can tell you is about the items inside the pods." Once she's finished as though on queue all the pods open at once and a rush of air hits us all and blows our hair around.
I'm fine since I wear my hair tied up in twin-tails but Tommy who grew his hair out had it blowing all over the place from the wind and he had to hold it down so it didn't obstruct his view of the items emerging from inside the pods.
Surprisingly Marianne, Delilah and Lumi were actually fine with the gust of wind. Likely because they keep their hair in short bobs presumably to keep it out of the way during combat. Dahlia was also fine for the same reason as me though she wears her hair in a single ponytail rather than two.
Once the gust that affected basically only Tommy we see something emerge from the pods. It's humanoid in shape but they appear to vary among each other. One of them towers over the rest and another is incredibly small. At first we thought they were people or perhaps robots but actually when we take a look they're not moving on their own.
They were metallic in appearance and when we looked closer we realized they fit each of us perfectly. The towering one fit Marianne to a T while the tiny one fit Lumi. There were also 4 other suits that while varied were roughly the same height wise and so didn't stand out against each other.
While we were staring at the suits with both confusion and awe Emily went on to explain what they were and how we would use them. "These are stealth suits. We'll also have combat suits on mission day but we don't have those ready yet so you'll have to be patient on that front. These are however likely to be the only suits you get to use anyway so it doesn't really matter."
That statement along with what she describes as it's specs shock us all. Even Marianne seems surprised when she hears everything Emily says next. "These suits are capable of scanning someone within a few metres of you and completely replicating them. Body structure, gait, fingerprints, anything and everything."
She goes on to explain that you have to get within a few metres of your target and stay there for a set amount of time but when you do you'll be able to replicate them with no issues. Of course this comes with it's own set of drawbacks.
"Though the suit can go invisible for a time mostly dependent on your power source, which drains pretty quick when you're invisible or mimicking someone. A ship's sensors would be able to detect you should you be inside the ship and while building sensors won't detect you when you're invisible you are also incapable of coming into physical contact with any objects around you including people. That and you're a lot more vulnerable than even being in an average combat suit. When you're invisible you may as well not have any protection at all."
Most of the issues are common for suits made not for combat. Heavy duty machine suits for example might be able to lift things tons heavier than you could but give them a good whack and they'll fall apart pretty quickly. One well placed laser shot would completely destroy the suit too. That type of suit is made for lifting things and surviving construction mishaps yet it still has issues. I imagine making a suit made specifically for disguise and making it sturdy would be nigh impossible.
"How long does the power source last when disguised?" Tommy brings up an important point. If we're going to be using this disguise to get onto the higher floors, which is what I presume they're going for, then we need to know the schedule to stick to.
"I'm afraid I don't have a good answer for that question. I can give you a rough estimate based on testing but since these power sources recharge based on energy in their environment such as potential and kinetic energy we don't actually have a good idea of how much you'll be recharging it during the mission." Emily responds dispassionately. She appears a little annoyed with herself or her company that she can't give us an accurate representation but an average in testing is better than nothing so we all nod and give her the signal to continue.
"During testing while standing absolutely still the entire time they lasted 25 minutes while transformed. Yours will likely last a little longer since you'll be moving around but I wouldn't count on it drastically increasing." Emily states the facts dispassionately.
So probably around half an hour or likely a little more. But we'll go with half an hour since she said we shouldn't count on it increasing too much. That's if we're moving around a lot though. If we simply walk through the corridors or we have to stay still to avoid detection that could be an issue and make it closer to that 25 minute mark.
"We'll have you acquaint yourselves with the suits later so I shall return to the topic at hand." interrupts Emily as she realizes we're all looking at the suits with curiosity in our eyes. Yeah we probably need to listen to the briefing and we're all adults so it's not like we're going to be distracted by something like this.
But still. It's kinda rude to introduce something like this and then not let us play with it. As I think about this however I realize that we're not all adults and look at Lumi and surprisingly Marianne. Both of them have twinkles in their eyes and they appear to be staring intently at the suits not focussing their attention back on Emily.
Clearly annoyed by their child-like reactions Emily puts on a smile and her high pitched friendly sounding voice resounds throughout the room. "ATTENTION Children!". Because of how high pitched her cry was it echoes off the walls of the broken down temple and bounces into our ears off them.
Usually someone calling out in this manner would be pleasant or at least not bone-chillingly terrifying. Yet there was something in her voice that captured the whole room all of us having a chill down our spines almost simultaneously as we turn our heads in her direction.
Once she sees all eyes are on her once again she continues explaining the mission completely glossing over the fact she just treated us like children and shouted to us about it. "As I was saying…" Before she can finish Delilah's rage at being treated like a child even though she wasn't looking at the suits like Marianne and Lumi boils over like an active volcano and she erupts at Emily.
"Are we just going to gloss over the fact that you just called us childr-" Before she can finish her lava spouting tyrade however Emily turns her smile in Delilah's direction. Immediately she shut up and we all let out a sigh of relief.
Emily was clearly on the verge of exploding herself given she'd been interrupted twice now and had to reign us in like brats. It was a rather unprofessional display if I'm being honest but we just ignore it like nothing happened and after a deep breath Emily appears to do the same.
"Once you get into the employee break room. You'll use the suits to copy one of the employees onto one of your suits while the rest of you will go invisible. Presumably the person doing the acting will be Tommy so good luck." Says Emily with a quick malicious smile in Tommy's direction before moving on.
"Once you have the employee's data you head up the stairs to whichever floor that employee has access to. Ideally they have access to floor 15 but 13 and above means you don't have to scan another employee." Explains Emily once again being dispassionate about it. It's almost like she's reading from a script. Perhaps she is.
"Once you're on that floor is where you're going to be working independently. Unfortunately the shield around the building means we can't communicate with you until you break the shield or get out of it's range. So from this point onwards you'll be on your own and calls will be made on site." Emily's explanation continues until she's interrupted by Marianne.
"Who's the one calling the shots if we can't get into contact with you?" Asks Marianne. Everyone around us just assumes Marianne will take this role. It's expected really. She has the strength for it and she's used to being a leader. We were only partially right however.
"You are commander in all combat scenarios Miss Marianne. However should the situation devolve under your leadership such that she needs to step in Amelie is allowed to contradict your orders on matters of mission objectives. Should you for example, decide to stay and defeat all the enemies or order that your team not kill anyone in this mission Amelie is able to tell the team otherwise and we are willing to accept that." Emily speaks on the subject coldly likely implying something the rest of us are unaware of.
Apparently Marianne knows exactly what she means but doesn't like it as her eyes narrow dangerously and I start feeling as though I should cower in place. The palpable anger behind her words makes everything in the room feel as though it's shaking under her voice. "Having someone who can defy the commander's orders is extremely bad for military discipline. Making special exceptions like that especially on a team as fresh as our own is downright foolish."
Her voice isn't loud. In fact it's soft almost inaudible. Yet everyone in the room heard it perfectly well and know what she's implying with those words. While what she said is true and it really is a bad idea, I can't help but think Marianne wants full command and this is her way of getting it.
"We are aware of the issues an unclear structure causes and chose this method anyway. To be exact, Amelie is an escape route. For those of you who think Marianne's orders are unreasonable, so long as Amelie thinks the same and orders something different you may disobey them. Otherwise however you will have to stay in line." Emily looks around the room as she tells us about the command structure.
It's honestly a little unsettling to be put in charge of contradicting Marianne. If I cower under Marianne's pressure then people might disobey her anyway seeing me as unreliable. On the other hand if I'm too forceful and controlling the others will obey my orders over Marianne's and it could become a whole different kind of issue.
Essentially I'm Marianne's shackles. "If you'd perhaps like us to put this another way. Amelie is your commander and Marianne your vice commander. While Amelie rarely gives orders hers take priority over everything else. That clear up the chain of command for everyone?" Asks Emily her smile growing a little crueller.
Just great. So I'm stuck having to look superior to Marianne else they won't obey my orders in a time of crisis. This is already a headache and Marianne hasn't even tried to contest me yet. Well she's certainly not pleased with this decision but she's contesting Mainframe's decision to put me above her rather than anything I've ordered.
"I protest this decision but I will let the mission go on as planned." Booms Marianne the anger being suppressed in her voice as best she can. She knows if the commanders are on bad terms it will make this mess even worse. Still I have to wonder why they put me above Marianne. Couldn't they put me below her and just have me advise her or something. Then it's on Marianne's head if she goes off the rails.