[color=#7b8973][h3]WO "Mikey" Rangel[/h3][/color]
[hr]
[quote]“We are at war. I assume we are getting a new mission.”[/quote]
Mikey rolled her eyes at the Frenchman's back--[i][color=#7b8973]Charlie? no, Charles[/color][/i]--but stayed silent. Half of her knew that already. They wouldn't have woken the whole unit up for anything less important. What she wanted was details. The other half of her... wasn't necessarily convinced that was the wrong conclusion, but it emphatically did not want to know. An actual mission? Where people were going to shoot at her? And she was going to have to shoot them? 

Suffice it to say her blood was already running cold by the time their group walked down the corridor to Director Bathala's office; even so, she was not oblivious to the feeling of dread that grew stronger the closer they got.

(Before manifesting her Noble Arm, Mikey would never have described herself as the kind of person who reached for a weapon when she felt afraid. Now, as she entered the office, she had to make a noticeable mental effort not to arm herself. The realization was not a welcome one.) 

Mikey wasn't sure whether the school's director was military or civilian, and after the last two and a half years of military discipline that left her a little uneasy, but she decided she could probably get away with just loitering in the background. Even having been in-country for less than a week, she was already getting the impression that Task Force Obsidian didn't exactly stand on military formality. She was still getting to know everyone, but by her count, somewhere between a quarter and a third of their Arms Masters were mercenaries, or at least here in a volunteer capacity, and half of the "regulars" were drawn piecemeal from foreign units. That sort of mix apparently didn't lend itself to strict discipline.  

One of their number was already waiting--one of the volunteers, if she remembered right. From the U.S., even, though Mikey would be damned if she had caught which branch. And she was... waving at Mikey? [i][color=#7b8973]Oh man, what was her name? Carol? No, Caroline, I think...[/color][/i] Mikey started to say something to her, glanced back at the group filing into the office, decided against it. Instead she returned the smile and gave Caroline a thumbs-up that even she had to admit looked awkward. [i][color=#7b8973]Smooth.[/color][/i]

She took a spot standing next to the wall as the group gathered, resisting the urge to fidget and squirm despite the nervous energy working its way through her veins and the tingle of fear at the base of her brainstem. She could at least try to look like a proper soldier, as much as she disliked the idea.

A few minutes later, her "proper soldier" pose was being hindered by her slack jaw. Was she cleared to know any of this? Did her [i]superiors[/i] even know this? What the hell even [i]was[/i] Occult Programming Language? Whatever it was, it was apparently able to erase the world she knew and replace it with... no, she couldn't. She [i]wouldn't[/i]. If she tried to wrap her brain around the whole thing she thought she would vomit and pass out, and not necessarily in that order.

Her eyes wide, she looked around the room, taking in everyone else's reactions.