[Episode 178687] [Episode 178687]More than a half-hour passed before someone thought to head down to the chamber to make sure everything was alright. By the time that the general population of the Manor found received news of the bloody goings-on (Borne and Marennes dead, Althena, Jeanette, Chloe, Kirika, and the Corsican missing), the True Noir had been given more than enough time to prepare to make their exit.
Although Jeanette had assured them that their stockpile at the Manor would likely remain hidden, the three assassins still took as much as they could feasibly carry — even if Jeanette was right, they had no idea when they’d be able to get back here, after all. After parting ways with Jeanette, who could use her position within Althena’s faction to escape from the premises with relatively few problems (assuming, of course, that she didn’t have any encounters with Rene Breffort and his ilk), and agreeing to meet up with the assistant at a small hotel in Andorra, Noir put their plan into action.
There are times when the best course of action is subterfuge; when one’s goal is to avoid the detection of one’s foe/quarry, so that they won’t suspect the fate one deals to them. There are other times, however, when it is necessary to make a clear statement with one’s actions — and in order to work, these actions must be very noticeable, or else the message behind the action will be lost. The plan Noir put into action fell squarely into the latter of these two categories; as Mireille had pointed out, if Breffort’s faction thought they were tools of Althena, they would probably pursue Noir aggressively once this was all said and done. Thus, they needed to show that they were subservient to no one but themselves, which meant that the body count within the Manor was likely going to be quite high.
The decision to leave the Manor the way they’d all come in (through the vineyard) was also motivated by the need to make a statement, at least in part; the fact was that Breffort’s men had most of the Manor surrounded, and Jeanette had to be given the safest way out (not that it was particularly safe in and of itself, but someone so close to Althena had little chance of surviving a direct encounter with the enemy if she was recognized — assuming that she wasn’t shot on sight, of course) played a major part in that decision as well. Thus, once Chloe, who was more familiar with the Manor’s layout better than the other two, had outlined the route the trio needed to take to escape back into the outside world, they proceeded to move out.
The trio blazed an extremely bloody trail through the building, but none of them really noticed the mess. (Interestingly enough, this had almost nothing to do with their status as Noir at all: as professional assassins, all three had long ago learned to ignore blood; it tended to dehumanize their targets, which made it psychologically easier to handle the fact that they made their living by committing murder.) They were able to move fairly quickly, considering that Mireille’s mobility was impaired by the injury in her leg as well as her bulky body armor.
The plan was simple. As they moved into a new room, Chloe and Kirika would use flash-bang grenades to stun large groups of targets, allowing Mireille to catch some of them by surprise with her AK-47. She then continued laying down cover fire as Kirika and Chloe picked off the remaining targets. Go to the next room; repeat. Easy.
And, considering the circumstances, the execution of the plan didn’t hit that many snags. Mireille handled her temporarily adopted weapon surprisingly well; granted, she wasn’t as effective as Kirika may have been with the Kalashnikov, but then, Kirika was quite possibly the best firearms user in the world. In any case, she was more than able to follow through with her original plan of drawing fire; many of their opponents, already disoriented by the flash-bangs, instinctively singled her out as a target, mostly because she was the one making the most noise and firing the most bullets (and making Mireille very glad to have picked up the body armor, as Jeanette had suggested). This, in turn, meant that Kirika and Chloe had fewer direct confrontations to deal with, which was a very bad thing — for their enemies, anyway. After all, while Mireille may have had the most ammunition, her two compatriots more than made up for their lack of firepower with ruthless efficiency.
Chloe was also adapting to her new weapon as well, albeit grudgingly. Though she was right-handed, she wielded the 9mm Glock pistol that she’d selected with her left, which allowed her to keep her dominant hand free to use her knives; according to her, this was not done simply to spite Mireille, but because, as the Corsican had pointed out, her customized knives would have to be used more efficiently than her bullets, as the knives were more difficult to replace. Thus, she reasoned, using a gun in her right hand would not be a very good idea, as she’d have to either throw knives with her left hand (which was relatively inefficient), or she’d waste time transferring between weapons, giving their adversaries a possible opening. Mireille had reluctantly agreed to this, though it had taken Kirika’s affirmation of Chloe’s setup to convince her. However, much to the blonde assassin’s surprise, this rather unique form of dual-wielding worked quite well, as Chloe’s blades were extremely effective in close combat, which became important as they encountered resistance in many of the Manor’s narrow passages, hallways, and other closed spaces where Mireille’s AK-47 was of little practical use.
In fact, it wasn’t until they were nearly outside that they first ran into what could be called a real difficulty.
“Argh!” shouted Chloe as a bullet suddenly hit her in the shoulder. Kirika and Mireille quickly finished off the remaining targets and moved over.
“Where’d you get hit?” Mireille asked.
“My shoulder.”
“Okay… Kirika, you’ve got the first aid kit. Take care of it.” Mireille reloaded her assault rifle, ready to hold back anyone who might try to take advantage of their momentary delay.
What Chloe said next came a great surprise to the Corsican: “It hurts…” The complaining tone amazed the blonde assassin; she’d always thought her antagonist had a childlike outlook on life, but this?
“Of course it hurts. Bullets tend to do that.” In retrospect, she could have chosen a better way to respond, but she didn’t really have time for retrospection at the moment.
“I know that! I’m not an idiot. I just didn’t expect them to hurt this much!”
This further confused Mireille, until she realized what it meant: “Huh? Wait… you’re one of the top assassins in the world… and you’re telling me this is the first time you’ve actually been shot?”
“Yeah…”
“Wow. I knew you were good, but to avoid injury altogether…”
“What about it?”
“Never mind. You nearly done, Kirika?”
Kirika finished taping a wad of gauze to Chloe’s shoulder. “Yes… I think she’ll be alright. It appears that the bullet just passed through.”
“Good. Then let’s keep moving.”
Their overall strategy changed a bit when they exited the stone building into the vineyard — by now, it was approaching dusk, which meant that the natural lighting was fading fast, and with it, visibility. Sure, there were a few lamps along the, but Noir wanted to avoid something that would make them such easy targets. They still roughly followed that path, however: though they weren’t nearly stupid enough to appear directly in a well-illuminated path (unlike several of their adversaries, who soon found themselves very dead), they still could use the lights as a navigational tool to make sure that they wouldn’t get lost.
By now, some of the nuns had figured out what was going on, and were trying to run away. Noir let them do so… Breffort would no doubt take care of them. Others, however, realized that everything they’d worked for (or rather, everything they thought they’d been working for) was destroyed, and, having nothing left to lose, attacked the trio what seemed to be a self-destructive attempt at vengeance or retribution. However, they were very quickly (and noisily) dispatched. Out here in the open, Mireille’s AK-47 was much more effective, and as a result, the roles from the inside were switched somewhat; now, she was the one providing the primary offense, with Kirika and Chloe covering her as she reloaded, in addition to picking off any stragglers they could find. Chloe was using her gun much more frequently now; though the effectiveness of her knives was not drastically decreased in reduced lighting, the opportunities to swiftly retrieve those knives were much more limited in open areas like this.
But this section of their escape, though it was still filled with hazards, was less dangerous than what had gone on previously — as well as what lay ahead. In fact, the trio was about to attempt a particularly huge gambit. Rather than trying to avoid Breffort’s forces, they would confront them directly.
Even if Rene Breffort hadn’t noticed the commotion from within the Manor, there was no way he could have ignored what was happening in front of him. He could recognize when someone was trying to get his attention, and the way Noir was using flash-bang grenades as they approached his position left no doubt in his mind that that they were trying to tell them something. Of course, the members of Althena’s faction who’d been captured by his men also filled in some of the story, claiming that Noir had gone rogue. This might have been good or bad; perhaps it meant that Mireille had successfully taken the place of either Kirika or Chloe, which would mean that the resulting Noir (in that case) be willing to cooperate with him, or at least negotiate some sort of truce wherein Noir would leave Soldats alone, and vice versa, or perhaps Mireille had failed and Kirika and Chloe really had gone rogue, in which case they were all in trouble. He didn’t really know what to do just yet, but he’d have to make some very fast decisions once he saw which two candidates had become Noir, but given the rate at which they were approaching his position, that event would not be long in coming.
And when it arrived, he was shocked. For into his vision came Kirika Yuumura and Chloe Wilde — not good. He was just about to order his men to fire, when he suddenly saw Mireille Bouquet limping behind them, which was absolutely the last thing he expected.
“Hold your fire!” he barked. Something like this required more investigation. Sure, it was risky, but then again, he was a part of Soldats, an organization where almost every action carried some sort of risk.
He waited as the three women drew closer — all three had their weapons drawn and ready to use, but for some reason, they didn’t. Perhaps it was a psychological tactic, or perhaps it was out of ammo, but Breffort still clung to the possibility that they didn’t intend to do him violence. Even though they were outnumbered nearly 100 to 1, and even though both Chloe and the Corsican were obviously injured, they still had a good chance of emerging victorious if the situation dissolved into chaos. When they were finally within hearing distance, Breffort asked the obvious question — or rather, he tried to, but he found that there were so many questions that none of them really took priority over the others. “What— What the— What’s going on?” he finally managed to get out.
“We’re getting out of here,” Mireille said, “and if you know what’s good for you, you won’t try to stop us.”
“But… all three of you… who’s Noir.”
“We are,” Kirika replied tersely. “Now, please, let us pass.”
“How is that even possible? Everyone knows Noir is only two people.”
“Everyone was wrong,” Chloe remarked with a hint of bitterness.
“Althena…”
“Althena’s dead,” Mireille replied. “And if you aren’t careful, you will be, too.”
The three women continued moving away from the Manor, though Breffort’s men held their ground, clearly intending not to let them pass. “This isn’t over,” Breffort said with a glare.
“Who can predict the future? We’ll live as we see fit, and we’ll carry out our mission as we see fit, and anyone who tries to interfere does so at their own risk.”
“In the end, the world still lies in darkness.”
Mireille just smirked at him. “That’s why we’re here. Now get out of our way.”
Breffort stared into the blonde’s eyes. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but something had happened in there, and whatever it was, it had totally changed the rules. Somehow, these three women, two of whom he knew absolutely despised each other, appeared to be working as a cohesive unit. As Noir? He didn’t know, but his instinct was telling him that now was not the time to test them; that even now, though two of them clearly wounded and all three of them surely tired and emotionally drained, to attack them without a carefully worked-out plan would be foolhardy, and would likely lead to his destruction. He still had questions. The answers would come soon enough, but Noir — were they really Noir? — was not going to provide them. Not tonight. Breffort made his decision.
“Let them pass.”
Five minutes later, three shots rang out, and the three men who’d been sent to follow Noir were dead.
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(Posted Thu, 14 Dec 2006 08:20)
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