Óscar instantly stood up, grasping onto anything that he could as he made his way into the lockers containing the parachutes, almost tripping and falling down due to the shakes that the plane itself suffered, holding onto a rope that was luckily attached to the metal hull, sighing slightly and grasping his parachute, putting it on and looking around: He was fucked, he had a fear of heights.

"This is safe you imbécil, come on..." he thought to himself, still holding onto the same piece of rope that he had previously grasped, his breathing getting calmer and calmer as time went on, just to raise and go as fast as possible when something happened. "Your turn pal..." the co-pilot said. Those words made his blood freeze, shaking his head before frowning, shaking his head again "Come on, come on, Óscar joder." he kept thinking, the sound of the wind rushing by tormenting him slightly.

"This is safe...right?" he asked, to no one in particular, just to reassure him...which was confirmed by the co-pilot obviously shaking his own head in the seat and lazily replying "Yes, it is, just make sure to pull the rope when you're near the ground." Óscar nodded, going near the door of the plane itself, grasping onto a piece of rope before putting a hand on his cheek, his hand slowly turning into a fist as he sighed loudly.

"I'm not a viking, but still, Valhalla!" he yelled, before jumping out of the plane, trying to distinguish any other person that he could stay near to. He knew it wasn't possible, but some kind of moral support would of have been really, really good right at that moment...but none of that happened, instead he kept yelling in terror as the wind and some water drops hit his face, wiggling in the air.

"Aaaahhh! Ostia puta!"

Jean landed smoothly. Maria and the siblings had landed just before him, but he couldn't yet to see them, thanks to the darkness. They had landed slightly farther than him, but Jean started to strip his parachute harness as he had trained. Jean assessed his surroundings as he took off the harness and started to fold his parachute. He didn't want to be surprised or be ambushed by the Germans. He didn't spot any threats, for now. Ying-mei was parachuting just behind him, and the others were still in the plane or jumping from the plane, taking their time.

What is keeping them there? Fear of heights? Jean thought for a second, but the threw the thought away. Now is not the time to look down on them, Jean.

Jean took his rifle, loaded it, and started to look for Maria and the others. They had fallen to the countryside surrounding Paris, but Jean didn't yet to have a clue where they had precisely been airdropped. There were a few fields and a forest nearby, but the darkness made it difficult to spot anything farther than a few metres. And Jean couldn't shout, either, as noise would attract unwanted attention.

He then heard a sound. It was the sound of a person landing, but not too softly, or so at least sounded to Jean. Jean approached the place carefully, and he kept his rifle ready, just in case if a curious German patrol had also heard the sound.

Jean soon found Ying-mei, on the ground, tangled in her parachute. She appeared unharmed. "Nurse Liu, I presume you enjoyed the flight?"

@ayzrules

Maria hit the ground and rolled, half-getting tangled in the parachute, but landing safely nonetheless. Quickly and effieciently, she took off the parachute and bundled it half-into her rucksack, parts of the darkened silk sticking out, but she paid it no mind. All of these would be stacked and burnt soon enough, it wasn't her job to neatly prepare it for landing again. With her current area clear for now, she eased her welrod out of her sausage bag and loaded a magazine, pulling the bolt back to chamber it.

She heard voices and froze, before creeping towards the sound of... English. Stupid fools. Coughing loudly to announce her presence, she looked at Jean and the chinawoman, the former with a loaded rifle, the latter still with parachute on. Looking back and forth she hissed to both of them to be quiet, before angrily telling them off for using the wrong language. "French only from now on. We need to find the others and go, now. Don't worry about packing the chutes nicely."

"Let's go find the others."

The siblings fell into the darkness, chill wind biting into any exposed skin. It was cold so far up, even in July. Izkry was grateful for the minimal training he'd had time to receive between arriving at the English base and them heading to France. Bel had wanted more, but she'd learned quickly. It wasn't so hard to angle herself to link up with her brother, and she gave him a rare smile. They plummeted down, side by side, Bel counting seconds to figure when to deploy her chute. For a stealth mission, you wanted to spend as little time in the air as possible, so it was best to drop as far as feasible before using the parachute. When she reached the right number, she signaled, and angled off. Moments later, two dark canopies blossomed open, one above each.

Izkry sighed in relief. He always worried the thing would get tangled or something. There was so much that could go wrong. Of course his sister seemed perfectly calm, but he couldn't remember her being afraid of anything -- well, anything other than people and her powers. Normal stuff didn't faze her. The rest of the drop was simple, and he landed, though a bit hard, immediately shrugging off his chute and checking his gear.

Belasý had touched down moments before, her landing far more graceful than his stumbled one, and now she too had discarded the parachute and was taking inventory. Satisfied she had everything, she took off her coat and folded it small to shove in her pack, along with her hat and goggles. A raised eyebrow at Izkry asked him his status.

"Good to go," he replied in Swiss German, earning himself an elbow in the ribs and a scowl. He winced and looked sheepish. "Sorry Bel," he apologized, using German Standard German this time. She responded with a sharp nod. His French would mark him as an outsider -- even hers had a distinct accent -- but their German was flawless, and travel was not impossible, so their papers and covers had them as Germans. "That or French," she reminded him, not loud enough for anyone else to hear.

"Oui, bien sûr." His flippant reply got an eyeroll, and Belasý turned away, looking for the others. She spotted some of them, and waved Izkry towards Oscar, who she'd managed to keep track of during the drop, waiting for her brother to help the shaken man up before leading them toward three other shadows. Those forms resolved into Ms. Dubois, M. Cambronne, and Ms. Wang, the latter having some trouble with her chute.

"The Meyers reporting in sir, madam," Izkry told their nominal leaders in flawed French. He wished, for what must be the millionth time, that he had Bel's way with languages. She soaked them up like a sponge, as she did so many other things. He was best with his hands, or an engine.

Ying-mei tried to follow the instructions she'd been given as closely as possible, resisting the urge to release her parachute as soon as she felt the wind whipping at her face. Breathe, Ying-mei, breathe, she thought to herself. It's okay. It's going to be okay. There's nothing to be afraid of. Ying-mei let herself fall until about the time that she thought she was supposed to release the parachute, and she let gravity do the rest.

Ying-mei landed rather clumsily, and she checked to make sure that she was unharmed. Well...no broken bones or sprains. Perhaps a bit of bruising and scratches and scrapes, but nothing serious or worth making a fuss about. Ying-mei hoped that the others had landed safely as well.

Ying-mei's ears picked up the sound of somebody approaching. For one panicked moment, she thought that it was the Germans. However, Ying-mei soon realized that it was Jean. She mentally let out a sigh of relief.

"Nurse Liu, I presume you enjoyed the flight?" he asked. Ying-mei opened her mouth to respond, but she was interrupted by a loud cough. Ying-mei turned, startled, to find a peeved Maria bearing down on them. She told them to only use French from there on out. Ying-mei nodded and packed up the chutes as she instructed, hastily stuffing it all into the pack. She also checked her gear while she was at it, making sure that everything was in order.

"I enjoyed it as much as one can enjoy jumping out of a plane," she whispered discreetly to Jean in choppy, heavily accented French.

A few moments later, Izkry announced his presence, his sister by his side, as usual. Ying-mei tried to locate the others, to no avail. "I don't see anyone," she told the others, squinting in the darkness.

Jean heard Ying-mei's whisper and said calmly to her in French "That's good to hear, but your French still needs a little polishing." He peered at the group. Half of them were together, but the rest were still unaccounted for.

"It seems they are still either in the air or jumped a bit later than us. Our priority should be finding them before they are found by the Germans, if they've landed safely" Jean continued. "Anyhow, let's keep our eyes open. I don't like to get surprised."

Jean turned towards Maria. "Of course, you'll have the final say in this."

Óscar waved back at them...from the top of a tree. He had seemingly gotten stuck on the way down, not noticing as numerous branches and leaves hit his face whilst slowly approaching the ground, the parachute stuck in multiple branches and some of them even "grasping" the Spaniard's clothing as he sighed, looking at the rest of the group with a chuckle and a wave, rain pouring down on them. He closed his eyes, the raindrops near to him slowly concentrating in one spot, forming what appeared to be a "water sword", Óscar grabbed it and froze it in less than a second, starting to cut the parachute's ropes that were keeping him from, well, falling. "Agh, what I gotta do for this misión..."

He fell onto the ground, face first into the grass as he slowly got up once again, putting a hand on his own back and grabbing the parachute itself, before walking towards the group, smiling at them before he spoke up in French, which he spoke quite well "We should, uh, either burn these things or cover them with dirt...so the hijos de puta don't find 'em..." he said, looking at Ying-Mei and giving her a pat on the back, nodding at the siblings and pointing at Maria "We did it señorita..."

Belasý found her confidence in the skills of the team dropping by the minute. She would probably have been better off going with just Izkry. At least she could anticipate him. Or perhaps alone. Goodness knew getting out was going to be just as hard, and her brother did not share her vendetta. He was a good man. He shouldn't have been in the army at all, but he wouldn't let her go off on her own. Yet another reason he was a far better person than she.

The bumbling Spaniard spoke French well, but he peppered it with Spanish. She scowled, and punched his shoulder -- not hard, but enough that he'd feel it. "No Spanish," she snapped, probably the first thing he'd heard her say. Her voice was quiet but forceful, and she spoke with a clipped cadence, using no unnecessary words. She glared at him, bright blue eyes looking right at him, narrowed in anger. "French /only/."

It was starting to rain, it appeared, and Belasý was already making friends by punching Oscar and scowling with her face. Well, Belasý surely is a people person, Jean thought. If they started bickering this early, they would never stand together in a firefight or anywhere else. A year ago, Jean remembered, he had served with good friends and comrades. Now, he felt that they had a long road ahead.

"There's really no need for violence among friends, Fräulein." Trying to sound encouraging, he said to Oscar "With that accent, my Spanish friend, perhaps you should stay spicing up your vocabulary with Spanish, just in case".

"That might be for the best. Some of Franco's supporters are still around, mostly with the regime of Herr Hitler. From what I've heard, there's no love lost between you and Franco, but... For the sake of the mission, no?" Maria watched as the silk fluttered, before looking towards the Spaniard. "Collect that. Before those cazzos find them." She looked up, the plane roaring away. "We appear to have lost some members. No matter, this was... Expected. We should make it to the safehouse, I gave the English gent directions. They should be able to find us, if not, there's no doubt that they can survive out here."

"Oh, and Belasý. We're counting on each other to survive. Just because you're a soldier doesn't mean you can go it alone- in fact, even the best soldiers should know that. There is an army out there, and we won't be fighting them head on...."

"We'll be hurting them when they don't expect it."

The Spaniard started to slowly walk besides María, adjusting his jacket and beanie due to the cold athmosphere. They did it, he thought they would just splash agaisnt the floor and not get up, but, he was wrong...and for once that was good. He then quickly reunited all of the used parachutes that were near, trying to find any good spot to either bury or burn them, finally pressing them together in a knot and starting to dig a hole: Not very deep, but deep enough for the parachutes to go in, with his hands, covering it back again with dirt and stones.

"Ugh..." he said, looking at his now dirty and numb hands, shaking his head before looking around once again, trying to see which direction they were going to go "Yeah...safehouse, I wouldn't mind a tea or something..." he chuckled, not saying it to anyone in particular, just expressing his thoughts and standing straight once again.

"So, erhm...yeah, just french mademoiselle María..."

Belasý glanced at Jean, then at Maria, but her only reply was a soft snort. Izkry sighed. "She really does do some of her best work alone, or with a very small and very...ah, understanding team," he said, watching her glance around to orient herself before pointing in the proper direction and heading that way. "A sniper, she does not need so much to work as a piece of something larger. Even so, I am sorry. She is...not easy to handle. Perhaps understandable given our history, but I do wish she would make more of an effort." He gave the others a lopsided smile and a shrug. He'd been trying to convince his sister people were OK for years.

((Short but hey, tis something!))

Jean turned towards Izkry and said to him "I understand. Sniper's work is often lonely, but she'll have to bite the bullet, for now at least. We will not have any chance of making out of here alive or to kill any Germans if we don't cooperate."

Jean paused for a second. He heard a sound, something he hadn't heard in quite a while. The sound came from a nearby small road, and it was the sound of German boots. They made a certain noise Jean recognized. Perhaps a squad or so, Jean thought.

"Scatter and lay low!" Jean hissed at others, instinctively giving them a sharp order, although he knew he wasn't in charge. Jean readied his rifle and tried to peer into the darkness. The Germans were talking and seemed wary, but they hadn't yet spotted them. Just a patrol, it seems. Perhaps they saw the parachutes.

Jean crawled towards Maria and spoke softly to her. "Your call, ma'am. A German patrol on that road. We still have the surprise for an ambush, but we can also sneak into the darkness, if you decide so."