Destroyed Winter Military Base.

Des and Rei finally made it to the massive structure that lie before them. They traveled well across many plains and through the unforgiving snow blizzards. They are now here. The structure looks as if it had rusted 1000 years but was only built 100 years ago. The Missle silo's looked rather new and the doors looked very clean for something so destroyed. Des shrugged it off and signaled for Rei to follow him further into the structure. Upon passing through the front gates, Des noticed a few vehicles with their engines still running. He grabbed Rei and pulled her into the nearest snow covered bush.

"What are people doing here? Things may get violent are you ready? Well get ready."

He studied the vehicles and realized they weren't of military aspect. He moved in slowly and motioned for Rei to follow.

They soon found themselves a few yards away from the Vehicles. Des noticed the drivers in the cars were asleep. Perfect he thought.

Rei was freezing cold. She grew up near the desert, lived above a bakery, wore long sleeves and black in the middle of summer. Cold was an annoyance; snow was murder.

She followed Des faithfully, though she still had no idea why she did. She crouched beside him, looking at the cars. "Asleep? Here?" She examined the rest of the area.

"Where are we going? Basement? Offices? Barracks?"

Des placed his cold hand over her mouth to silence her. He snuck up next to one of the cars and peered through the window. He noticed they were unarmed, but that didn't mean to people inside were. He went back to Rei and nudged her foward. They snuck past the cars and entered through a rotted rust hole on the east side of the building.

"If I remember correctly, we are on the east side, the cafeteria, head(bathroom), and bunks are on this side. If I know the Commander, the files are hidden underground in the 5th sector of this building. Come on, we have no time to waste, be cautious."

Des lowered himself and moved quickly through the halls.

Rei followed silently, ears alert for any sound other than the normal sounds of a winter wilderness. "'Cause you know what that sounds like," she chided herself. The farther they went, the more nervous she became. She pulled off her left-glove to reveal her automail. She desperately hoped she would avoid frostbite while she was here.

"Better safe than sorry."

Footsteps echoed through the halls. She grabbed Des' shoulder to stop him so she could listen, then pulled him ahead to a side hallway ahead of them as the man rounded a corner and entered the hall they had just been in. Rei flattened herself against the wall and hoped the man would pass and not see them. Her hope rose as the man walked past them, then tanked when he stopped and turned around. 'Who's there?' he questioned, pointing a handgun at them.

Rei groan softly and raised her hand. She flicked one of her fingers in his direction. A small ball of lightning flashed through the air and struck him in the gut. The man twitched before falling to the ground. Rei caught the gun and drug the man back toward Des.

"I suppose you'll need something to fight with if we get separated."

Des snickered and patted Rei on the head.

"Thank you Rei."

Des grabbed the handgun and cocked the chamber back loading the gun. He felt a wave of nostalgia wash over him as the sounds pierced his ears.

"Love that sound. Let's get those documents."

Rei rolled her eyes and dumped the unconscious man farther back in the hall. "Hopefully no one uses this one." She paused a moment to listen before running back out into the main hall, crouched low as she did so, though she was unsure why since it had no affect on how loud her footsteps echoed through the hallway.

She stopped at each crossroads of halls and listened, grateful each time to find that there was nobody else coming. "There weren't enough cars to bring in many people," she whispered to nobody in particular. "What are they doing here, anyway? Which way are we going?" she asked Des.

There were two fresh sets of footprints in the snow going the same direction she was.

"Who would come up here at this time of year," she muttered, pulling her coat tighter around her. It was cold. Face-numbingly cold, and the driving wind didn't help. She walked on until the base was in sight, and halted in her tracks, there were cars idling outside. I thought this place was abandoned. Interesting..

Dropping to a crouch, she snuck around to the west side of the building and found what looked to be like a loading dock. There were two truck bays and one door. Dwyrin shuffled up to the door and found it was locked. What did you expect She pulled the ring off her finger and concentrated. The familiar feel of the morphing metal was a comfort in this place. She placed her newly formed lockpick in the lock and worked the mechanism until the door clicked open.

She entered what amounted to a metal tunnel. No decoration and no doors other than the one at the end of the hall.. Well I guess that makes up my mind of where to go first, she thought wryly, as she hurried to the door.

"Des?" Rei repeated, turning around. Her companion was nowhere to be found. She listened, trying to hear his footsteps or even his breathing, but could hear nothing. "Des," she whispered harshly. "Where are you?"

When she received no reply, she sighed. She now had to decide whether she was going to go ahead on her own or turn back and try to find Des. In a split second decision, she decided to keep going. A crooked grin broke out on her face as she turned and raced forward in the direction she had been going.

"A lonely adventure. Haven't had one of those in a while."

Through the door, was more metal. Only this time, it was a metal staircase leading down. She cautiously headed down, aware of how loudly her footfalls echoed off the walls.

I should have run into someone, by now. She was sure she had seen the outline of people in the cars outside, so unless they were the only ones here...It stood to reason that she wasn't alone in the building. She kept going down until she reached the bottom. It was dark, down here. The flourescent lights on the walls buzzed loudly, but barely gave off enough light to see by. There were three halls she could take, and instead of metal, the walls and floor were now concrete.

She had no idea where she was going. No one had given her the specifics of where she was supposed to look for those blasted papers. Not even the right floor! Led more by instinct than anything, she took the hall to her left. Six steps later, she heard faint footsteps.
...Getting louder, maybe??
Definitely getting louder.

Rei unconsciously flexed her left hand as she slipped through the halls unseen, unheard. She knew there were people somewhere in the construct, but had no idea where they were. Her footsteps echoed obnoxiously through the halls. She knew that anybody listening could hear her without problem; she could hear them, too, if they made a move.

Rei turned a corner and picked up speed. Stealth was doing her no good. Speed was the best way to get through safely. She turned another corner and raced up a flight of metal stairs. She stopped on the top stair, looking ahead. The hall here was made entirely of metal, most of it covered in rust.

"He said the basement, but I have yet to find any stairs leading down. Might as well keep exploring," she thought, grinning to herself. She began her race through the hall when the rusty floor gave out on her, sending her plummeting downward.

Two sets of footsteps. Fablous.
She hurried along the hallway and turned a corner, hoping the people the footsteps belonged to would be going in the other direction.
They weren't.

Uneasiness was setting in as she hurried around yet another corner. There was a set of stairs ahead, and she climbed it, desperate to not be seen. She got to the top just as the people rounded the corner and passed beneath her.

She released a breath she had not known she was holding.

"Ow ow ow," Rei groaned as she lay face first on the ground amidst broken pieces of rusted metal. She curled up tightly, then sat up, legs tucked under her. She looked around frantically when she realized she had no idea where she was. She breathed a sigh of relief when she found nobody around.

After a quick inspection told her that she had not been harmed in the fall, she rose and inspected the room she had fallen into. It was small and dark. A single, frozen over window allowed some light to filter in, though it was hardly enough to distinguish shadows from people. Rei walked the circumference of the room twice before stopping and standing in the middle.

"Who builds a room without doors?"

This floor looked much the same as the last, so she ran back down the stairs and tried to find her way back to where she was. She wasn't sure how long she had been wandering around but, had the feeling that she was getting nowhere.

A boom shook the ground. It was followed by a quick succession of a few more small crashes. The sound was deafening. Dwyrin let out a yelp of suprise and covered her head - there was small bits of concrete falling off the chipped ceiling. What was that

Rei stomped angrily, then thought better of announcing her location at the moment. She looked around a moment. She could use her alchemy to get her back up a floor, but the papers were supposed to be down a floor. Rei studied the floor beneath her feet, then knelt down and touched it with her left hand. She created a hole in the ground just large enough for her to fit through, a small knife out of the metal she removed.

She looked through the hole to check for enemies. She saw one person and backed away, desperately hoping they had not seen her.

Des noticed a small shadow of a figure some distance away. He disposed of the unconscious guard he knocked out and stole his gun. It seemed as though Des was building an arsenal of weapons. He turned back around and inspected the place he saw the shadow.

"Hey, who is there? Who makes a hole in the ceiling. Come down or i'll shoot!"

Des trained his gun on the small hole and waited patiently.

She recognized that voice.
As if my job needed to be more comlicated
It sounded close.

Squinting through the falling dust, she saw a faint circle of light beaming onto the floor ahead. The end of the hallway came out into the middle of another hallway. At the end of this corridor and the meeting of the next was where the circle lay, so the light must be coming from a hole on the ceiling around that point.

The circle of light was momentarily gone, like the sun going behind a cloud, and then bright once more. She stood in the hallway trying to figure out what to do.

Rei stuffed her new knife in the top of her boot and dropped down the hole to the floor below. "You're not very good at the concept of stealth," she said quietly. She turned from him and ran down the hall away from him, crouched low to the ground to try to mask her footsteps again.

Des watched her run away from him and he followed right behind her.

"Rei, stop running. We are almost towards the basement. The thing with this place is that you need to go to the top to find the way down. Let's go this way trust me. By the way, this place is crawling with resistance."

Des flashed his arsenal of weapons he collected from various resistance members he knocked out.

"You sure that's Resistance?" Rei said, stopping to look at him. "Could be Drachman soldiers." Rei turned again, then ducked into an open side room. She heard footsteps belonging to someone other than her or Des.

Des quickly followed behind Rei and ducked into the same side room. He looked at Rei and wondered why she questioned him.

"Listen Rei, this is my...I mean OUR mission. Which means we go 50/50. If I think they are Resistance we kill. But if you believe they are Drachman, we still kill them! Huzzah!"

Des stood tall and placed his hands on his hips. He proceeded to pull another gun out and dual-wielded.

"Packing Chrome my dear. Let's kill them!"

Rei clapped her automail hand over Des' mouth and signaled silence with her other hand without looking at him. She listened carefully for the footsteps. They grew louder, then stopped. Rei held her breath, praying that whoever it was left. They did and Rei sighed.

"We're here to get these papers and then we leave. If the papers are of any importance, these people will get in trouble for loosing them and their superiors will take care of them. No need for us to dirty our hands," she whispered before reentering the hall, coat flying out behind her as she ran.

O_o How did they not see me??, Dwyrin wondered as she listened to Rei and Des' receding footsteps... It had to be a trick. Any second they were going to turn around, and come back here, see her, and...do what?? Nothing. They couldn't possibly belong here right now either, not with Des knocking people out, and Rei transmuting holes in the ceiling. Wait. Transmuting?? So they're both alchemists, eh?? She cleared her head of these thoughts, and set them aside for later evaluation. For now, she had more important things to think about.

She ran toward the hallway that the other two were still proceeding down and stopped at the edge. Just as she was about to peek around the corner Des called out,
"Rei, stop running. We are almost towards the basement. The thing with this place is that you need to go to the top to find the way down..."

That was all she needed to hear. As interesting as it might have been to stay for the rest, they were all heading to the same level, it appeared, and she wanted to avoid them if possible. Dwyrin spun on her heel and ran - as quietly as possible - back towards the metal staircase she had first come down.

"Up to go down, huh?" Rei thought as she flew through the halls. She knew now how to get where they were going, but she had to figure out how to do it. She slid to a stop at a crossroads and waited for Des to catch up if he chose to follow. Whether he did or not mattered little to her at this point. She was just here to have fun.

"Down we go, then!" Rei knelt down and placed her hand on the floor. She quickly transmuted the metal beneath her into another dagger, this one looking more like a broadsword that had been shrunk down and then severely truncated. She pondered changing it, unsure why she created it in the first place; she shrugged decided it could prove helpful later.

She examined the new hole she had created. She had been lucky enough to create an opening to a room below and it happened to be empty. The hole in the middle of such an open area made her smile. It would catch a lot of attention if someone else ran across it.

"Let's hope they do," she thought as she slipped through her doorway to a lower level.

She was winded. She had run up a flight and then back down two more to finally be on the floor above the basement. Problem was, the stairs didn't go down anymore. She retraced her steps from the pervious floor, but on this one. There was one big difference. There was a door at the end of this hallway. Dwyrin catiously walked up tp the large door and put her ear to it, listening. Hearing nothing she tried the handle but it was locked.

A ring here, a touch of alchemy there...Voila. Instant lockpick

She cracked the door and looked through the gap to confirm that there was no one there. There wasn't. The door apparently had not seen an oil can in many moons, for as she swung the door open it let out an unearthly sqeak. As if he had appeared out of thin air, a man in a strange uniform came skidding around the corner of one of the three hallways in front of her.

He was just one person.
Not a problem.
She sprinted toward the man - and then another came running around the corner. And another.
Ok. Maybe another time. She clumsily stopped her forward momentum and spun to run in the opposite direction. After the shock of seeing her wore off, the three men pursued, shouting at her to stop. Then another came out of a side hallway, and he was armed. She heard a bullet go whizzing by her, and promptly rounded a corner.

Her eyes were little 'O's of suprise and her flight momentarily faltered. Rei was standing in the middle of the hallway, in a little cirle of light.

"Run!" She suddenly regained herself and yelled. The footsteps and shouts were too close for comfort.

Rei heard a loud bang - a gunshot - promptly followed by shouting and many footsteps running through metal halls. She stopped and waited, half-hoping they would go away. "Only half?"

'Run!' she heard from behind her. Dwyrin was charging at her like a crazed bull. Behind her were several armed men. What Dwyrin was doing in this madhouse of metal, Rei had no idea. Acting on instinct, she pulled back from the hole and waved for Dwyrin to come, then pointed at the hole - go down it.