They returned to the auto shop almost exactly...who knew how much later. Drew added mechanical watches to the list of things he needed to acquire. The lack of knowledge about the world around him was beginning to get very annoying; he missed GPS, his cell phone, and hamburgers. The thought of a hamburger made his stomach rumble. Katie and Sarah both laughed.
"I take it you're hungry?" Katie asked, and Drew nodded, digging through his pack to pull out a handful of Beef Jerky.
"Yes. I really want a breakfast burger, with a nice drippy sunny side up egg on top."
"Oh gosh, I would really love a honey mustard and avocado salad," Sarah said, her own stomach rumbling.
"I'd like some fresh waffles with whipped cream and strawberries," Katie said. The others nodded in agreement.
"Oh man, remember in A-school, they had that waffle bar every weekend; Fresh waffles, any kind of berry you could ask for, whipped cream, and shaved chocolate?" Drew added.
"Yeah, it was basically the only thing that was edible during the entire A-school experience," Katie said with a grin. Sarah just nodded her head, not having spent months in Petaluma suffering the results of students learning how to cook like they had.
Daryl greeted them at the door to the auto shop. He stared at Drew for a moment, then frowned.
"Hey Daryl, how's it going?" Drew asked.
"You can't hear me?" Daryl asked with a frown, and Drew paused for a moment.
"Oh right, one second." He tried to think up an interface--his new xatherite said it would block all unwanted mental intrusion, and it apparently defaulted to blocking everything. Nothing happened, so instead, he thought about allowing Daryl's communication in. "Try now."
'Hello?' Drew heard Daryl's voice in his mind and smiled.
"Okay, I got it that time. Sorry, I had to unblock you," Drew said with a shrug and Daryl just glanced from Drew to the two girls.
"Did you guys pick up more xatherite out there or something?" he asked. All three of the coasties just laughed and moved into the building.
"We ready for the planning meeting?" Drew asked, between a mouthful of the jerky he'd taken out of his pack after commenting on food. Daryl assented, following along with the other three more out of habit than anything else. They were all as crazy as Drew was.
"What on earth did they do to Coasties to make them so strange?" Daryl muttered under his breath. The Coasties opted to ignore the rhetorical question, although Drew had an urge to belt out some random phrases they had been required to memorize in boot camp about King Neptune. Most of the survivors had collected around a workbench in the middle of one of the auto bays. There were a few papers taped and stapled together that recreated their knowledge of the interior of the former DIA building.
Once all but the three or four people who'd been posted as sentries were gathered, Sarah stepped forward and cleared her throat; the talking immediately ceased. Sarah seemed a little surprised by the suddenness of the quiet. "Excuse me, everyone. I just wanted to get this planning session in order. The sooner we organize everything, the sooner we can rescue everyone." She paused for a minute to gather her thoughts. "First things first, what's our status on weapons, food, and armor?"
Min Sun answered first, "We have 15 troll armor, two orc armor, and that's it." Sarah nodded her head in understanding.
Bill spoke next, "Ma'am, aside from you and Katie's two spears, and JP and Robbi's guns, we've got a half dozen metal bats, and other blunt weapons mostly improvised with what was available in the auto shop. We also have five fire axes and about a dozen handmade grenades. As for food, we have about 5 days' worth for 24 people, give or take a few meals."
Sarah nodded, "Alright, so we need to get more food for the prisoners we rescue, and some more weapons wouldn't hurt the cause either. Bill, I want to discuss some logistics with you afterward, but I'll turn the meeting over to Drew to plan the rescue itself."
Sarah stepped back, and Drew took her spot. "So, I guess first thing...Do we think they're going to send another food gathering group out today?"
No one answered, and the silence lingered for ten heartbeats. Bill finally broke it, "Well, they're going to have to feed people somehow. A day or two might be fine, but…" He trailed off, not wanting to say the implications.
"What are the trolls eating?" Sarah asked since the food runs had been for human food only.
"I've never seen a troll eat anything," Bill said, and all of the prisoners murmured in agreement.
"Alright, well, let's assume they're going to send out another team today. If they do, we need to be in a position to ambush them again. We also need to work on how we're going to get everyone else out. Does anyone have any skills that can cut through metal? Even if it's slow, I personally have a small amount of acid I can use a couple times a minute. Anything like that?" Drew looked around, but no one seemed about to raise their hands.
"Okay." Drew turned to JP, "What's your effective range with those pistols?"
"I can hit center mass on moving targets 55 out of 60 times at 60 feet."
"Wow, okay. Can you use a rifle?"
"Yes, I'm not as good a shot with one, but all of my skills work on any firearm."
"Any particular reason you aren't carrying one?" Drew asked, running a hand through his hair. Everyone else was pretty much just watching the exchange between the two.
"Lost it on the bridge," JP answered with a glance at Robbi.
The interplay between the two was not lost on Drew; but he moved past it, "Alright, who knows where we can get JP a military grade rifle?"
Looking around the room, Drew got a few shrugs, but no one seemed to know where to find one. "Alright, we'll have to raid the exchange; there should be some rifles in there. We'll send a few people. Arm as many people as you can; not everything is going to be immune to bullets, and we're going to have a lot of people to rescue."
They got into the depths of planning how to rescue the people left inside the DIA building. After discussing the location where everyone was being held and where the trolls inside were, the plan presented by JP ended up being the most popular one. Katie would create a safe location with JP, Daryl, and a few others acting as scouts, and the two illusionists would hide the building until Drew had managed to eat a hole into the wall with his acid dart spell.
If everything went well, they would be able to evacuate about half the people before any of the trolls even knew that they were there. The other half would require Drew to act as a defensive screen from within the building while Bill, Sarah, and the others healed anyone injured and evacuated everyone.
The first major problem was that there was no intermediate safe location before they got back to the stadium. There was no stopping point between here and there, at least, not one that could hold several hundred people. The mana storms had been coming every other night at this point, so that was their deadline to get back to the stadium.
The trip was only a few miles along a paved road, but they would need to find a way to guard against mana twisted creatures like squirrels and turtles harrying them until they got to the bridge. Then they would need to cross the bridge while defending against the squid, at which point it was only a few blocks through the patrolled area around the stadium until they were safe. The difficulty with the first portion was that they really only had JP and Drew that could stand against the creatures; the others would be armed with a few guns, the spears, and other improvised weapons they had made. The only workable solution they had for keeping safe along the bridge was for Katie to create a tunnel. It would take some time, with Drew and JP acting as a rear guard on the near end of the bridge while Daryl went ahead to ask for help from the stadium.
The plan of action decided, the group split up into their various tasks; Drew, Robbi, and Daryl headed north to ambush the trolls if they opted to do another food run. Despite what Ares had told him, Drew wanted to go alone, but even Katie and Sarah had insisted he take Robbi with him in case something got close. Daryl was going to be acting as their forward scout; his invisibility was invaluable for that kind of activity. JP, Sarah, Katie, and all the rest of the former prisoners went to the exchange and commissary to stock up on additional weapons, ammo, and food.
They waited in ambush in the same place he had two days previously, although this time he didn't bother to hide as much. He was too worried they wouldn't see him and would attack the other group. He spent thirty minutes pondering Ares' words and the things that happened to him onboard the Olympus. If they could transfer a mind into another body like that, why would Ares need to send people to their deaths? Couldn't they just transfer them into those fake bodies? Or was it a cost thing? Or a cooldown issue? Did his delaying sleep cause Ares to send some of his people to their deaths that otherwise could have been saved if the spell had been available?
The sound of gunshots to the south roused Drew from his reverie. He glanced south and realized that someone had sent up a flare; where had they gotten flares? He pushed himself up off the roof, blink stepped to the ground, shouting to Robbi, "The Exchange!" Hopefully, Daryl heard him as well, but there was no time to ensure the scout was coming with them. Robbi quickly caught up to him and kept pace with him, but his pistol wouldn't be worth much against trolls.
Drew urged himself to go faster but was slowed by his lack of physical training and the heavy combat boots he wore. They were a couple hundred feet from the backside of the commissary. Katie's group should be either in there or in the exchange still, which was another couple hundred feet of parking lot away from the far side of the commissary. As he ran, he continued to hear gunshots and he pushed through the stitch that was gnawing at his abdomen.
Rounding the southeast corner of the commissary to where they could see the parking lot, they found the source of the shooting. More than a dozen trolls were circling a group of humans. JP was shooting anything that got close, but there were too many people for him to be able to cover all sides, and the trolls looked like they were trying to separate individuals to carry off.
Drew skidded to a stop, slipping on the wet morning grass, but kept his footing and began to cast a frostfire storm to protect one side from the trolls. Robbi had stopped with him, but when he began casting a spell, he moved about ten feet out and pulled out another pistol, ready to defend Drew from any trolls that attacked.
The storm spell caught three trolls who had been jumping towards the group and cut them off from the west side of the humans. JP continued to unload his pistols into trolls that came close, but as soon as the spell went off, the trolls disengaged, moving away from their former prey. Drew shouted and launched a fireball at a troll, causing most of the trolls to look his direction as he began casting firestorm. The fireball missed the troll he'd been targeting but hit one behind it as the first jumped away.
They cried something in their own language and all the ones on the north and east side of the group turned their attention towards Drew, leaving JP to handle the ones on the south side of the group. Drew's firestorm went off while the trolls were still relatively grouped up, catching all but two of them within its radius. Two trolls were still bearing down on him and about 175 feet away from him. Drew cast Dancing Blade, hoping that it wouldn't get to the point he needed it, but not wanting to waste frostfire ball's cooldown while they still were plenty far enough away to dodge the spell.
As they breached within 100 feet of him, Drew launched frostfire ball, targeting the one that was lagging, where it impacted above the troll, sending icy shrapnel flying. The leading troll's jump faltered as he was impacted from behind by ice shards. Drew launched an acid dart at his face and then figuring that the cooldown was off, launched a fireball at it, causing the troll to disappear in the fiery explosion.
Taking a breath, he frowned, the adrenaline causing his hair to stand on end. Almost on instinct he blink stepped forward as far as he could and hearing the deafening crack of thunder behind him told him his instincts had been correct. The shaman who'd sacrificed humans had escaped from his ambush that first day, and he didn't particularly like Drew.