ms_legendary | [For Sarah] Crazy Town

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[For Sarah] Crazy Town

My name is Nikita. Seven years ago I was taken off of Death Row and trained to be an assassin by a covert unit of the government called Division. Almost four years ago, I escaped and I've been hunted ever since. I fought back, taking apart Division missions one by one until they were the ones on the run. Twelve days ago somehow, someone took me out of the game and put me here on Tabula Rasa. They say there's no way off this island, no way out, but they said that about Division too...

Nikita sprints along the northeast edge of the island, low to the ground, and comes up with her back against one of the pylons. She waits, controlling her breath, for one of the IPD patrols from the outpost or one of the more military ITF people to come to investigate the perimeter alarm she has to have triggered. She waits the full seven minutes that she's allotted for a slow arrival from the IPD outpost that powers the invisible fence, and while she does, carefully moves around the pylon to learn what she can from it.

No one comes, and the security devices in the pylons aren't recognizable. They clearly generate some kind of electrical pulse, but how high the charge and what it targets isn't yet clear. Unless they have hidden ATVs or helicopters, she has twenty minutes before someone getting the alert on the other side of the island can get to her here moving at high speed.

Stepping away from the pylon, Nikita picks up a rock and throws it at the space between two of them. The rock soars through unaffected. She throws another at the pylon itself, still to no effect. She tries a balled up bundle of tall weeds next, watches a bird soar through at the height of the top of the pylons and a monkey swing through above them. Nothing. Either they're not on (not likely, the power feeds from the IPD outpost appear to be on) or they're not designed to keep things out, but to keep them in.

Like Division.

Yes, in twelve days she has heard the rumors that there are dinosaurs beyond the fence, but that's insane. There can't be dinosaurs, even in a place as crazy as this island. It has to be a cover for something. Something with people they don't want getting out into the general population. A research facility, a high tech observation station, a training center for recruits, quarantine, transportation out...

You terrorize people with the impossible for one reason and one reason only, in Nikita's experience. To keep them from seeing something else you don't want them to see. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Nikita's never been good at following instructions. She's off to see the Wizard or maybe the flying monkeys.

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Sarah's heard there are dinosaurs on the island. It seemed half the people she met mentioned them, even those who didn't know her past. But after Matt and Emily tell her about them, it's not long before she decides to go check them out for herself.

Past the invisible fence, Sarah finds some tracks that even to her unpracticed eye look like some kind of smaller dinosaur. Abby or Connor would know more, and she finds herself torn between wishing they were here with her or all of them being safely home. Home would be better, but she thinks they would love the chance to explore here for a little while. She knows being in dinosaur territory alone maybe isn't the best idea, so keeps an eye out for anything likely to see her as a tasty snack, while trying not to lose the trail of whatever it is she's following.

Nikita crosses the perimeter and makes for the nearest tree, skins around behind it, and waits. Breaking into secured facilities is always like this. Hurry up, then wait for the guards to pass, then hurry, then hide - even with a map and a QB, it's a lot of this. Without it, she's got intelligence and instincts.

Even though it hurts to breathe if she thinks about the voices not in her ear guiding her through, she feels good. Strong. This is the clearest she's felt since Jason found her. Clearer than when she helped Julie, who she needs to check up on to keep her promise. This is something she knows how to do. It's familiar, even if she's going insane.

After four minutes (not five, and the next time will be seven, mix it up, don't stick to a pattern), she stretches out her legs and sprints a quarter mile to another big tree, puts her back against it and waits while she catches her breath. Six minutes, six and a half, no one's coming, no one--

She turns her head at the snap of a twig. It's a toothy lizard thing the size of a small dog. "Great," she says out loud. "My luck whatever they're hiding is actually being guarded by genetically engineered miniature-dinosaurs."

The voice is unexpected, both because Sarah doesn't think there will be other people in the dinosaur territory and because the speaker sounds surprised. Looking for the source of the words, Sarah sees the small dino first. It's about the same size as Sid and Nancy, but more reptilian, and not a creature she's seen before. She thinks she sees a shadow on the far side of a tree up ahead, but she's not positive that's where the voice came from, so she directs what she says to the general area.

"I'd like to say I know it's herbivorous, but I'm afraid that's outside my area of expertise. But it would appear there are, in fact, dinosaurs in dinosaur territory."

"Where I'm from, 'Dinosaur Territory' is code for 'Keep Out. We're Breaking the Law'." Also just her luck that the first person she meets back here has a mouth on her. On the upside, it's not a characteristic she usually associates with black ops guardian types.

She cranes her head around the side to look, just a quick peek. Woman, older than she is, curves not muscle, non-military clothes and gear, no obvious weapons. Smart mouth, not her field of expertise...

"Let me guess. You're one of the scientists," Nikita calls out, head tipped upward to mask the direction of her voice. She's safe enough for now, but Dino's starting to lose whatever fear he's got and his head's swinging side to side like he's smelling for his next meal.

"Actually," Sarah stars, knowing how odd her answer might sound, "I'm an Egyptologist. But I've friends, back home, who would love seeing this little guy. I guess...I was missing them." She holds to what Matt told her, that Abby and Connor had come back alive and well, even if she hadn't.

The dinosaur (dinosaur, now she knows she's losing her mind, she has to be) makes a high-pitched little sound that's possibly the most terrifying thing Nikita's heard outside of an explosive countdown. That's until there's an answering screech-chitter from the bushes off to her left.

"Listen. Love to chat. Seriously, sounds fascinating. Now's not really a good time for me. Any chance standard Egyptologist kit includes a semi-automatic." She eyes the lizard advancing on her and bends slowly down to pull the knife from her boot. "Or a taser. I'd take a taser."

Some sounds cause a primal response, no matter what you think you're used to. That screech is one, and Sarah starts as her heart leaps in her chest. Thought takes longer, but what her brain tells her is not so different from her reflexive response. Time to be somewhere not here. Especially since it sounds like there's a group of whatever this little guy with the big voice is, and off in the direction Sarah had come from.

"Sorry, all out." That was always Becker's responsibility. Thought of Becker reminds Sarah she does have something which might be of use, but she's not ready to hand it over to a complete stranger just yet.

"Can you get up the tree?" she asks. "If it's feeling threatened, leaving it be might be the best thing we can do until it leaves."

"Left mine in my other universe," Nikita says dryly and then adds, "So tree it is. Unless you're an Egyptologist by day--" She half-steps around the tree once, and then again, so she's where she can start a climb and protect the route, letting the other woman see her and the knife in her hand it's clear she's perfectly capable of using. "Superhero by night--" With her free hand, she gestures behind her at the tree, gaze never unlocking from Dino and his pals starting to appear from the brush. "You first."

She'll worry about whether this woman's friend or foe later. Plenty of time for killing her after they're not Dino-dinner.

It seems a bit like the proverbial taking a knife to a gun fight, but the woman looks like she knows what she's doing with the knife, so Sarah merely makes note of it. Her gaze travels from the first dinosaur, to the group, then to the woman, then she nods. It's been years since she's climbed a tree, but she climbs quickly, if not exactly expertly, until she's a little over halfway up the tree, and the boughs are beginning to thin.

For the moment, introductions can wait.

Nikita listens for the sounds of climbing to stop, knife ready in hand and gaze trained on Dino. What she doesn't know about dinosaurs or animal predators would fill the island; what she has is the knowledge that it's never a good idea to look away.

So she and Dino are locked in a staring match for the time being. If it were only one dinosaurs, she's confident she can kill it and survive, but there are more heads and eyes than she wants to take the time to count.

As soon as the scientist seems to be settled, the dinosaur darts forward. Nikita parries, slicing with the knife. The dinosaur gets its teeth in her shin, but the mouth releases, leaving only deep scratches behind. The creature falls away, bleeding from from a slice across the back of its neck that may have partially severed its spinal nerve from the way it's not moving.

"Sorry, little buddy," she tells it, vegetarian sensibilities making her genuinely regret that she's killed it. It's probably the fresh blood and not her that has the others swarming forward, but she's not planning to wait long enough to find out. The knife's already between her teeth and she's climbing.

Settled, with her foot braced against the trunk, Sarah's able to reach down, offer the woman a hand up. She'd say the odds are slightly in favor of the woman not accepting it, but it's available if she chooses to surprise Sarah.

The dinosaurs are working themselves into a feeding frenzy below, snapping and swiping at each other as much as at the one that paid the price for trying to attack the woman. If they're lucky, the creatures will eat their fill, then wander off. But there's nothing to do now, but wait and hope that happens.

Nikita's grateful for the offer of a hand up but, after a quick glance downward at what looks like a pool of land sharks in feeding frenzy below her, shakes it off. When she takes the knife from between her teeth, she'll explain it's too dangerous. Nikita's steady on her own and so is the other woman. If the dinosaurs jump or she loses her grip, only one of them goes down, leaving the other hopefully free to fight.

Not, Nikita thinks, that she'd be lucky enough to find herself treed with a scientist with combat training and a willingness to use it to save a dead woman's skin. But if she dies (again) saving a life instead of taking one, the scales of her own life are a little more balanced. So she climbs, and by skill instead of luck, evades the dinosaur that seems to have emerged as the leader of the pack when it leaps at the tree to try to catch her.

Removing the knife from between her teeth, Nikita nods to the scientist as she finds herself a defensible position. "Your friends with the dinosaur-expertise," she says wryly. "They give you any odds on how often this wait them out strategy works?"

"We usually didn't have time to wait," Sarah admitted. "Or the more...armed members of the team decided gunfire was more efficient." Becker's protectiveness tended toward the sure thing rather than a wait and see approach, although Abby had had some influence over him at times.

"But mostly it depended on the type of creature."

"Gunfire would be more efficient." Nikita sighs down at the mutant lizards. "It's also cruel. They're engineered to be predators and we're prey. If I have to kill them, I will, but I'd really rather not."

She tucks her knife back into her boot, where it won't fall and it's easy to reach, then finally studies the other woman. "You might as well get comfortable. It'll be awhile before I decide I have no other choice."

"Warning shots work too, sometimes. But generally not while they're eating." And a lot of what they ended up trying to send back through the anomalies had hides too tough for bullets to be more than a nuisance.

She's glad though the woman doesn't want to kill them; it makes Sarah feel better about being treed with someone who obviously knows how to fight. And as it looks as though they'll be here awhile, whether waiting them out works or not, she thinks it's time to get to know the other woman some. She gives the woman a friendly smile and offers her hand again, although not for aid this time. "Hello. I'm Sarah."

"Unless you've got a gun you neglected to mention, we're fresh out of warning shots," Nikita counters, but it's mostly wry by this point. At least the scientist, Sarah, is calm and she's not insisting Nikita do something.

"Nina." She's not one for shaking hands, but she does anyway. If she wants to get them out of here alive, it'll help if Sarah trusts her. Refusing to shake hands isn't going to help that. "How exactly does an Egyptologist get mixed up with dinosaurs?"

"I doubt you'd believe me if I told you." Especially if Sarah tells her she saw the demon goddess Ammut, who was actually an ancient reptile. "It wasn't anything I ever expected to find myself doing.

"The short version is an evolutionary zoologist chose me to join his team thanks to my knowledge of mythical creatures. But I'd guess it was as much my need to stick my nose in where it probably didn't belong as anything."

"We're being treed by a pack of dinosaurs on an island that's reputedly outside of space and time." Not that Nikita believes it, but there's no reason to tell Sarah that, or that she's right, Nikita doesn't believe her.

Nina would, so Nikita shrugs, smiles a sharp, small smile and lets the interest burn in her eyes. "Try me. It's not like we've got anything else to do and it beats wondering how soon these things are going to learn how to climb."

"Very well," Sarah acquiesces, sure the woman is simply humoring her in an attempt to pass the time, but as stories went hers could be entertaining, she thought.

"It was not widely known, but in the world I came from, what we called anomalies, rifts in time, would just suddenly appear. Like a doorway from one era to another, and sometimes people or creatures would travel through the anomaly. I first found out about it when I was working in the British Museum when an anomaly opened there, and a couple of enormous prehistoric crocodylians came through. Eventually I joined a team that studied the anomalies and tried to predict when and where they would occur."

It turns out, she doesn't have to fake Nina's interest. While she doesn't believe it, it's still an amazing story, especially since Sarah seems remarkably sane outside of it. It stings too, because it's a story Birkhoff would eat up. She knows she's passed through the living room during at least a dozen science fiction shows like it.

Nerd. Some days she misses him more than Alex and Michael. Her rock. He was there for her when Michael went to London, and oh she wishes he were here now.

Her gaze softens, but Nina's shouldn't, and she quickly pulls herself back to ask, "If your team travels anomalies in space and time, why are you stuck here?" It's a little sharp-edged, but a journalist doesn't waste time with unimportant questions.

"The same reason you are, I suppose," Sarah answers, a bit pointedly, but really, what else is she supposed to say? "I haven't found a way out."

But she wouldn't leave it just at that, not when she could explain a little more. "A teammate and I were attempting to go through an anomaly into a particular point in the future. I can only hope he arrived safely. I ended up on the beach here instead, with no sign of an anomaly in the area."

"Interesting." Nikita's tone has the clipped intelligence of a reporter and her gaze stays steady until a snap of a branch below and a heavy thud attract her attention.

"They're getting bolder. Fortunately they just stripped the easy branch for them to get to us from. Unfortunately, it's also the branch we needed to get down."

She sighs and it comes out sharp, almost as pointed as Sarah's earlier remark. "No hope for one of your anomalies showing up here, I guess?"

"Not likely. And no way of knowing it wouldnt lead somewhen with bigger and badder predators if one did." Nina's right, though, they are getting bolder.

"I'm supposing you don't have any recklessly brilliant ideas?" If need be, Sarah will use the stun grenade in her bag, but she'd rather not have to unless it's necessary. She only has the one, after all, and who knows what the island might throw at her tomorrow.

"I didn't survive as long as I did by being reckless," Nikita remarks, somewhat offhandedly while she surveys the dinosaurs and the jungle. It's not entirely true, since Michael's been yelling at her for being reckless with her life for years, but she hasn't been recently - hadn't been she reminds herself, because Brandt was probably reckless, but more so for Michael than her...

And her thoughts are spinning out on her again, to Michael, to what happened, and she just can't do that. She can't, or they're going to die here and now and she won't save Alex and she'll never find out what happened to Michael and Wolf and Jason will never know what happened to her, and...

Her head comes up. "Do you have people here on the island, anyone who knew where you were going and would come looking for you?" It's a long shot, she realizes, but one worth asking about.

Sarah shakes her head. "No one's expecting me any particular time, and I didn't tell anyone where I was headed today." Matt and Emily might think to look for her in the dinosaur territory if she went missing for too long, but that wouldn't be any time soon.

Her body droops slightly. "I was hoping it wouldn't be necessary, but it's looking as though we won't be that lucky. I can stun them...for a time. Although who knows what else it will draw the attention of."

Great. Jason or Wolf might come looking for her, but by the time they decide she's missing and not hiding, this'll be all over but the vultures. That's what she's thinking when Sarah mentions stunning the dinosaurs and Nikita perks up immediately.

"Stun." She cocks her head, intent, and eyes the woman's bag. Why didn't she mention that before they got treed? "What kind of stun are we talking about? Taser? Drugs? Grenade? Grenade would be good."

"Grenade," she confirms. "But I've only the one." And recognizing that look, not too different from one Becker's worn more than once when...wrangling his sometimes wayward scientists, she goes on. "And before you say anything, I had a lot on my mind, what with...everything. Grenade wasn't the first thing to come to mind. Especially as I'm used to not carrying one myself."

But she pulls the grenade from her bag, studying Nina carefully before deciding to hand it over.

Nikita nods, less concerned with what Sarah didn't say before than the weapon she's giving her now. She takes it, turns it over a few times and examines the manufacture. It's unfamiliar and that's the first solid piece of evidence Nikita has that some of the crazy she's been experience might actually be real. There's not a weapon made that she doesn't know by sight.

She catches her lip between her teeth, then catches Sarah's gaze. "How's your aim and your comfort level with using it?" She's starting to have a plan.

"My aim's all right, but like I said, I used to not carrying these myself." Could she help it if Becker didn't usually trust them wih weapons? Or going places with an escort of him or his men? "If you think you can do better..."

"I can do better." It's not cocky or challenging but a simple statement of fact. Sarah's a scientist, and Nikita can tell by the soft, beautiful curves of her body she's not trained for military exercises. "But you need to be a lot more accurate with a knife than a stun grenade. Keep it."

Nikita doesn't like relying on strangers to make her plans work. Sarah's level-headed, but she's an unknown quantity and that makes fighting dinosaurs (that are also an unknown quantity) a lot more dangerous. The longer they wait, though, the more chance there is something bigger's going to come along to see what's in the tree and then they're screwed.

"Okay. This is the plan. I'm going to go down there and fight. While they're distracted with me, you're going to get down and run. When I head your way, you're going to stun the dinosaurs. Give me a count and trust me to get out of the way. If I get knocked out too, look to your own safety first, but I'd appreciate a hand out of there if you can manage it." She gives the other woman a wry, but unfrightened smile. "And if they kill me, run like hell and speak of me fondly."

"Or..." Sarah starts, looking at Nina like she might be crazy. Although Sarah had asked if she had any recklessly brilliant ideas. This seems to qualify for half that anyway. "We drop the grenade from where we are, then while they're out cold, we both go down and run like hell. Just a thought."

Nikita shakes her head. "You'd think that would be the best solution, but it's always better to have your ace in reserve," she explains briskly. "We could run into something worse trying to get out of here, and if I can get us free without expending it--" Which hadn't been in her instructions, but seems self-evident: don't throw the grenade if you don't need to. "We're that much safer."

She doesn't want to concede, even mentally, the possibility that worse might be larger dinosaurs, but stun grenades work fine on armed pursuit, too.

"Tell me when you're ready."

Honestly, Sarah's plan would work too, but Nikita's oddly unwilling to risk killing a dozen dinosaurs if they can escape by her killing just one.

Sarah drops the grenade back into her bag. Better to have both hands free to climb than risk both falling and dropping their 'ace' trying to do things one-handed. She still thinks her idea is better, mostly because it doesn't involve Nina taking on a swarm of dinosaurs with only a knife.

"Do one thing for me?" she asks, eyebrow rising. "Don't die."

I'm already dead, comes the regular reminder from inside her head and the deep, welling ache in her chest. I'm dead without him.

She quirks a small, cocky smile that's real for immediate purposes but as false as half a dozen identity cards in a drawer in their house. "Don't take this wrong, but I'm planning on not dying. For me." For Alex (Annie), Wolf, Julie, Jason.

You have no idea what it would do to me to-- Shut up. Shut up. Shut up, she tells her brain, then pulls her knife and starts her descent.

Even better, Sarah thinks, but the woman was willingly taking on a bunch of carnivores, specifying had been the right thing to do. "As long as we're in agreement."

Nina begins on her way down, and Sarah gives her a chance to get a little ahead of her before following slowly. She wants to be ready, in position to move as quickly as possible, so Nina spends as little time facing off the dinosaurs as necessary.

As soon as she leaves the safety of the branches, Nikita's world narrows down to the woman behind her she's got to protect and the dinosaurs she's protecting her from. They're small and fast, but teeth and claws will take a lot longer to kill her than one well-aimed gun.

When she gets low enough, she wraps one arm around the trunk of the tree and dangles a foot down toward them. The lizards jump and she yanks her foot away. Their jaws snap on nothing. She shinnies down another foot. Lather, rinse, repeat - damn! Razor sharp teeth slice through her boot to her foot. Flesh wound, stings like a bitch, but won't slow her down. The scent of blood stirs the predators though and they're a boiling snapping mass below.

One more time, but this time when it leaps, she's ready. A downward slice behind the neck and the dinosaurs screams and falls. The others turn on it in a frenzy and Nikita leaps down to set, slash and guard. Her fist and feet blur, knife bites, convincing the smaller ones she's a viable threat.

"Go!" she shouts and blocks an attack with a forearm strike beneath the jaw.

Sarah's only keeping enough distance between them not to be in the way, and when Nina gives the word, she moves, running as soon as her feet hit the ground. One thing the ARC gave her plenty of practice at...running from dinosaurs. As she runs, she manages to get the grenade out of her bag again, so it's ready when, or if, she needs it.

She heads in what she thinks is the shortest distance toward the boundary, glancing back when she's fairly sure the way in front of her is clear. The last thing either of them need is for her to trip over something, becoming even easier prey for hungry dino mob, but she needs to keep an eye on how things are going for Nina too.

Another dinosaur lunges for her and its claws slice across her hip when she meets it with a roundhouse kick and parries teeth with blade. The knife sinks into soft palate and must nick against the brain, because it seizes, dropping away - not dead, but maybe dying.

She'll regret it later, apologize later, light a pyre or something. Later. Now, one dead, one dying dinosaur is enough to make her a lot less interesting and when the others swarm their newly fallen fellow, she slides away first behind the tree, then into the brush, and then deeper into the jungle.

When she's sure she's not being followed, she angles her path toward Sarah and the electric fence and runs.

Once she sees Nina get clear of the dinosaurs, Sarah doesn't plan on stopping until they're both on the other side of the electric enclosure. But when they are, with the dinos out of sight and hopefully still intent on their feast, she slows, breathing heavier but not out of breath. Thank Becker, for insisting she do more running.

"Are you all right?"

When Nikita drops out of her run to lean up against the pylon, she's still half waiting for the ITF or IPD to come down on them out of nowhere. It's why she keeps her back to cement, eyes on Sarah but ears on everything. She's breathing harder than she should be because her ribs aren't fully healed, and her foot hurts like a bitch, but compared to some missions, she has hardly a scratch on her.

"As long as dinosaurs don't carry rabies or tetanus, I'm fine," she says, wry. "Even then, I should be okay. I'm current with all my vaccinations and then some."

We should get that foot cleaned and bandaged, though. I hate to think what might be living in a dinosaur's mouth." Sarah hasn't had need to go by the clinic yet, thank goodness, so she doesn't know how well stocked it might be. But not letting an injury get infected is always better than the alternative.

"In my experience, clinics on remote tropical islands don't tend to be much more sterile than the island's animals," Nikita answers somewhat untruthfully, but it spares her the cliche and off-putting what do you mean 'we', science gal?

"I've got supplies where I stay. So, thanks, but I'll be fine. Are you okay?"

"It must be nice, showing up here with a fully stocked first aid kit," Sarah muses, only gently pointed. Nina's injury needs tending, but she's also a grown woman, and can take her own chances if that's the way she wants to be.

"I'm fine. Curious, but unhurt. So 'bout like usual then."

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[For Sarah] Crazy Town

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