[IC] SPIRITUM

[Vertigo]

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Completely unaware as to why Collette was backing away from her and her wild gesticulating, Silje followed without a second thought. She took a step forward for every step the princess took back, like they were part of some strange dance choreography. Maybe they were! Silje liked the thought.

She did not like Gerard and Justice's answers when it came to keeping the princess. "But missions change!" she insisted, hands in the air. "Ours did! Like a bazillion times today alone! We were supposed to be on a road trip, then we had to make friends in a corner store, and then avoid raining robots, and blow up sharks, and—"

They weren't even listening—!

Not that Silje was, either. She was expertly tuning out the rest of the conversation as she pondered on what to do. They weren't handing the princess off right this second, so there was still plenty of time to come up with a plan to keep her. But... for that, she would probably need an accomplice. She might be able to convince Gerard, because Gerard could be convinced to do anything that seemed fun(ny), but then Justice would just look at him all meanly and convince him right back, so that was a no-go. Kali was super important to her, but not ideal for a mission that required stealth and subterfuge and specifically not killing anything.

Speaking of people important to her, though, there was—

With a slowly forming grin, Silje turned to her childhood friend, who's attention was on Gerard. Silje inched closer, tugging at her sleeve and leaning closer the way she had back at the monastery, whenever she'd had a good intrusive thought idea to share.

"Heyyyy, Valfriend," she whispered, employing a term reserved only for the direst of times. Surely she'd know Silje meant business just from hearing it. "I think you're right, we should adapt and improvise. And... if I was going to do something very adapted and improvised at some point when we run into... um, problems, you should definitely help me."

[Psyker Landshark]

Kalina Kovalic

"He stopped being mission-critical the second I confirmed he was actually dealing to the imperials on the side." Was all she said to Gerard before picking the body up and sauntering over towards the RV.

Kalina watched dispassionately as Ivan's corpse burned with his RV, as per Gerard's suggestion and courtesy of a Fira spell from herself. Well. That was one annoyance in her life dealt with for good. Time to move on. She extinguished the flames with a wave of her hand once everything within had been turned to cinders and turned away, rejoining the others.

She arrived just in time to catch most of the discussion regarding the princess, and simply shrugged.

"I'm with Justice. Don't want an enemy royal on our hands for any longer than we have to. Let the spooks deal with this. None of the rest matters." Kalina gestured vaguely in Collette's direction, continuing to not treat her like a person. She still had no intention of making nice with the princess. Vangar was the enemy. Hell, the world's enemy. The number of bombed-out, conquered nations she'd traversed through her childhood made that more than evident. Better to just shatter their leadership and society and be done with it. Let them get a taste of what they'd did to every country between Vangar and Rassvet. This, of course, was something the rest of the squad knew perfectly well about Kalina, having dealt with her opinion on it enough over the years.

"Hm?" She tilted her head at Justice's last few words, mildly confused. "There's something to talk about? Think the whole thing is more or less cleaned up, boss."

[vietmyke]

Gerard Biserus

"Love the optimistic outlook, boss." Gerard chuckled sarcastically, but didn't otherwise argue the point. The princess for her part seemed to be concerned at the thought that others might have known about her innate properties without telling her- though she seemed most alarmed at the fact that she was only now learning about this, from what more or less amounted to a group of enemy soldiers no less. Unsurprisingly, none of them- save Silje seemed too keen on being particularly kind to her, not that she could really blame them. Collette more or less fell silent, stiffly nodding at the suggestion/declaration/order to continue the mission. It was true, the sooner they parted ways, the easier everything would likely be for all parties included.

Not wanting to waste Ivan's stock- but not necessarily having the ability to smuggle things through checkpoints, the squad took what they needed, and shoved what they could into necessary mist pockets. An impromptu bonfire later, and the WARDENs were piled back onto the truck and on their way.

---

Dunbarton

The next day.

Following the crash site, the drive was surprisingly uneventful- luckily for them. Save for a rather large pothole that rattled their breakfasts, the next day found the WARDENs once again unmolested until the city of Dunbarton began to show up on the horizon. Dunbarton was an old city- older than the Capital city of Orestia by far. Supposedly having been around since the late middle ages, Dunbarton originally began as a trading outpost, connecting the upper cliffs of the region with the forested lowlands, and for a stretch of time during the budding years of Rassvet as a nation served as its Capital for a time. The old bones of the city had been rebuilt several times at this point, both old and new buildings combined together in a hodgepodge of styles and purpose.

Nowadays, Dunbarton wasn't really forgotten about, but it was hardly a tourist destination. Outside of some centuries old museums about ancient heroes and the site of the nation's oldest power plant. Their were rumors of an undercity built in the wall of stone underneath the city proper, but no official acknowledgement of it had ever crossed the WARDEN's notice.

"We'll be out of your hair soon enough, princess." Gerard commented idly, poking his head out of one of the flaps on the side of the truck to observe the oddly arranged city skyline. "Just gotta find Veld's agents in all of this. Speaking of, how are we-" As if on cue, Gerard's phone- the one they'd used to contact Veld with, buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number, and the message had nothing but a series of numbers. "Oh, of course, why send us an address when they could just give us a coordinate string. God forbid someone types out a street name."

Poking his head into the truck cabin itself, Gerard took a peak around. "Veld's boys sent nothing about getting us past a checkpoint, so I guess we're on our own with that." Gerard remarked, as the Barghest's truck slowly pulled into a small line in front of the city checkpoint, a quartet of tired looking guards waving vehicles in one at a time.

"Halt." Came the tired command of one of the checkpoint guards as the battered old truck rolled up. "Papers. Purpose of visit." He recited tiredly, basically off a script as another guard walked around behind the truck to poke his head in the back. "Lot of you in here, ain't it? What yall doin' in a surplus truck?"

[Psyker Landshark]

Kalina Kovalic

Somehow, they made it all the way to Dunbarton intact. And when Kalina was referring to 'they', it was mostly in reference to the truck. She hadn't trusted that the ad-hoc repairs made would've lasted all the way to the city, but somehow it held together. Which would have made it incredibly awkward if the vehicle had broken down waiting to pass through security.

Kalina couldn't help but tense slightly as the checkpoint guard approached, making note of how many of them there were. What, wasn't this supposed to be normal? Gerard had gone on and on forever about having this road trip experience like the movies. Why the hell was this guard surprised at all?

...This was probably Gerard's fault. Those movies weren't representative of anything at all, were they?

Nevertheless, Kalina's brain locked up slightly on trying to lie while keeping Veld's directives of not revealing anything in mind. Above all, the guard had to not notice the princess. Problem was, she was terrible at lying. Keeping a straight face, sure. But somehow, people just knew when Kalina tried to fib about anything. So she went with the first truth that came to her mind.

"...Seeing my dad. I got told he's stationed here in town." Kalina said tersely, hand reaching back towards Justice for the squad's papers, which she knew the latter had. "Oh, and here's my open carry permit." She gestured towards the pistol holstered at her side before passing the aforementioned permit to the officer as well. Better safe than sorry.

[OwO]

Justice

For better or worse, the situation in Dunbarton seemed to be calm. That either meant things were fine or extremely bad. A small part of Justice wished for the chaos. It would have made it easier to sneak in, if anything else. But if nothing else, she'd get her wish of a brief moment of brevity and normalcy. At least until she did something absurd like stick her face in front of a barrel again.

Then Kalina was the first to speak to the border guards. The mere concept of which sent shivers down Justice's spine. Thankfully, Kalina kept it short, sweet, and honest. That was lucky. Though her habit to carry her gun on her was bit of a bother.

Justice was thankful Kalina didn't try to lie her way out. Unlike Justice who lied as easily as she breathed, Kalina fundamentally couldn't word good enough to support any sort of lie. Of course, that didn't mean Justice was about to concoct some elaborate ruse on the fly. She might have done that if she were alone. Unfortunately, her friend group wasn't exactly the best at subterfuge. Gerard would be off snickering, Kalina would probably be sweating like a human faucet--or perhaps a fountain statuette, it was a complete wildcard what Silje would follow up with, and Morden would probably just stand there bizarrely brick-faced. At least Val would be there to not shit things up.

"Surplus was the cheapest way to road trip, turns out." Justice said as she handed Kalina--and by extension, the city guard--their papers. "But with how our trip's been going? Had to ditch the clothes thanks to an infested motel. Now I'm wearing a gift shop. Should have sprung for an actual RV."

In all honesty, the sooner they got out of this line up, the better. Bad things usually happened in line ups.

[Vertigo]

__________________________________________________

The princess didn't seem very happy, Silje noted, as her and the WARDEN crew climbed back into the truck to continue towards civilization. The engine gave a familiar rumble as Kalina hit the gas, presumably swerving around the largest shark bits on the road, and running over the rest. They were on their way, away from a yet another messy scene.

Finding a spot atop one of the crates, Silje started throwing expectant glances at the princess and her friends, waiting for someone to start a conversation and break the tension. No one did — not with the dejected princess, at least. Much to her dismay, Silje quickly realized it'd be up to her to cheer Collette up. Which meant she'd finally need to muster the courage to actually talk to her — about stuff other than her weird mist leakage, anyway. But what did you talk about with a princess?

Thinking too hard about it made Silje sleepy, so she ended up sliding off her perch, opening the crate in question to slip inside, closing the lid, and taking a nap instead.

—

The next day, Silje was well-rested.

So much so, that she'd finally scooted over to the princess and struck up a conversation, about... well. It might've been easier to list the topics she didn't try to talk about, switching from one subject to the next so fast that by the time they reached Dunbarton, they'd covered pretty much everything from best breakfast foods to war crimes and why they were sometimes called for.

"We'll be out of your hair soon enough, princess," Gerard threatened, and Silje gasped. No! She wanted to be in her hair longer! She still wasn't a knight, or a prince, or any other cool title a princess could bestow upon you, for starters.

From the sounds of it, they were to hand over papers to the guards, which Kalina and Justice seemed to be handling just fine, so Silje whirled back around to the princess instead. She grinned. "I call this place Dumbarton," Silje stated, a little too proud, a little too loud.

[Blizz]

---

Morden hadn't said much during the trip to Dunbarton. It was one of the great cities of Rassvet' history, that the country they knew today had built itself upon and he knew this because he made a point of knowing the nation well- It was difficult to understand a universe if you only understood one planet. His dream was to one day the best WARDENs the world had ever seen, and he had to know things like the back of his hand for that. Dunbarton wasn't anything special now, but it was a place where the old world knew it could trade, and that meant it could be a place of trade in the future after the war was won.

Morden wasn't openly carrying his shotgun, and his ammunition was stored away as well, so he didn't get any fuss from the checkpoint's guards. There wasn't much to say either, and as long as the princess kept her head down...

"It was the easiest way to travel in a group," The titanic WARDEN said from the back seat. Another, lower-ranking guard had walked over and looked very on edge when Morden spoke. He was like a dinosaur that one only saw when its eyes opened, a warship that crept up on the horizon. And the poor lad didn't like his energy.

"How'd you get those scars?" The little shit pried.

"Fist fights."

"With who?"

"Eight foot tall metal men with giant swords, who fell from the sky and tried to kill me. I won."

The private chuckled. "Riiight. Let me guess, you know the princess of Vangar too," He joked.

Morden turned away from the window and gave the others a blank, deadpan stare. And then he rolled up his window.

[vietmyke]

Gerard Biserus

---

"Mhmm." The checkpoint guard's eyes were practically glazed over as he read the documents, his eyes glancing up briefly as he compared the information he on the papers to Justice- indicating that as bored as he looked, he was indeed paying at least a modicum of attention. "Well, you picked a hell of a time to go visit your dad." The guard chuckled mirthlessly. "There's a beer festival or something going on, so the streets are crowded and the hotels are packed. Mind how you drive." He added, glancing at the large, beaten looking truck.

In the back of the truck, Gerard was snickering more or less like Justice's inner monologue had predicted, as Morden stirred the shit with an ever impassive face. The guard had a laugh that was shared with no one, as he continued poking around the back. "You there," He pointed at Gerard, the princess next to him shooting up like her spine had been replaced by a steel rod. "I'll have a look at your papers too, and the one next to you."

"Sure," Gerard replied casually, slowly reaching into his back pocket for his wallet, his brain unsure what to do with the princess- they'd changed her clothes and put a hat on her, but forging fake IDs wasn't exactly in any of their skillsets- maybe Justice, if she had time and a space to work, but definitely nothing on the fly. "Well? Don't take all day-"

The private was interrupted by the checkpoint guard slapping the side of the truck. "Its fine." the lead guard called back, "Just military here to visit family."

With a slight rumble and hiss, the truck continued its rather unceremonious trek through the checkpoint. As the guard at the front had mentioned- it was slow going. The roads were thick with cars and people, and it was early afternoon- basically as busy as the city would get. They could heard the distant sounds of music and the near constant dull roar of an entire city of people talking. Bright pennants hung on strings stretching across streets and buildings, and more than one sloshed daydrinker forced Kali to come to a sudden halt as he walked through traffic, a rather grumpy looking police officer cutting him off on the other side.

"Think we can stop somehwere for a drink?" Gerard called out from the back, "I only vaguely recall putting Dunbarton Bier Fest on the itinerary!" His voice dropped a bit lower as he poked his head into the cabin from the back of the truck, his map app open on his phone. "Veld's people want us going here-" he added more seriously, floating the phone up onto the dash. "An even older part of town, if you could believe it. Residential district by the cliffs. I don't think this fat ass truck is going to be fitting into some of those alleyways."