[ the trail of destruction is easy enough to follow. Peter's been leading them on on quite the chase.
She has no plan. She doubts Peter has much of a plan either, but that's beside the point. Man, she wishes Zer0 or Gamora were here. She doesn't really do stealth, but she's keeping her eyes open for a chance to start picking some of these assholes off. ]
[ Her moment might come when someone finally has the bright idea to cut him off by taking an adjacent hallway. As Peter's rounding a corner, he's suddenly tackled to the ground before he realizes what's happening. He's damn lucky his helmet took the brunt of the hit when he fell forward, slamming his forehead against the ground -- but it's still enough to leave him dazed, white spots swimming in his vision. By the time he's recovered, he's already surrounded and seriously fucked.
It's only when they have him restrained and disarmed that someone starts barking orders -- Get a collar. Get the boss -- and some of the guards split off from the main group. ]
[ her heart is racing when she hears those orders. She won't let Peter go through what she went through. She won't lose him to this the same way he almost lost her.
Deep breath Maya. She won't be saving anyone if she lets nerves get the best of her. She skirts back, keeping a fair distance from where they have Peter pinned. She can do this. She's fought her way through countless bandit camps. She helped defeat ths Warrior.
The first man to round the corner gets the butt of her gun slammed into his nose. While he's reeling, she puts a bullet in his head. Two more come around the corner, and one instantly goes up in her phaselock- he suffers the same messy death as the man earlier. His friend is close enough to get caught in the torrent of elements, but Maya shoots him too for good measure.
There's one left, but he's smart enough not to charge in blindly. That's when Maya switches out her HellFire for her sniper- it has a wicked-looking bayonet on the front- and she surges around the corner, driving the blade into his gut and pulling the trigger. He goes down, convulsing as electricity surges through him.
She rounds the corner, puts the sight to her eye and targets the guard pinning Peter down. With his head in her crosshairs she pulls the trigger. ]
[ Even as she's taking care of the group that's split off, Peter is struggling to get free, because this? Is seriously one of his stupidest plans to date, and shit, what if they get the collar on him and it works? And that's fucking terrifying, his mind not being his own, his body not being his own.
And what will happen when his team and the Nova Corps come in and see him fighting on the wrong side? They'll squish him like a bug, because he's Terran (or mostly, anyway), and he has nothing special about him, and fuck, he bets Gamora is gonna have an awesome time kicking his ass--
The head of the guard above him fucking explodes (gross), and he doesn't have time to think how or why or what in the ever-loving-fuck, just surges to his feet and fights hard and dirty and desperate. ]
[ In the chaos that ensues, Maya holds her ground, picking off guards every time she gets an opening.
One gets too close to Peter for comfort, and she pops him up in her phaselock. Slag and flame and electricity and acid pour over the battlefield. The crowd is thinning, at least. She can only hope Peter gets out of there okay. ]
[ The phaselock catches him by surprise, but the sound is so familiar that he smiles a little behind his mask (even as he's thinking, goddammit, Maya, you had one job--).
He catches sight of her, finally, as he's ducking beneath a wild swing, and he sees his beloved blasters lying forgotten on the ground. He dives for them, grabbing them up and twisting onto his back to shoot at the guy he'd been tussling with -- not electricity this time, but bursts of fire lancing red hot into the man's chest, made all the more lethal by Maya's slag.
He twists again, aiming himself in Maya's direction, and slams the heels of his palms down onto the triggers for his jet boots. He skids along the ground on his back, firing at the guards as he goes.
He stops just short of her and gets to his feet. ]
I think we've stuck around long enough, sweetheart.
[ by the time Peter comes shooting down the hall, there's only a handful of guards left, and his shots land true more than once. If there's anyone unfortunate enough to remain standing, they meet a messy end by Maya's sniper fire.
She gives Peter something of a Look, which is all the warning he gets before she's in his face, jabbing a finger into his chest ]
[ He wants to reply, "I'm kind of the leader, here," or "Way to defy a direct order," but there are muffled shouts from up the hall and Peter just grabs her hand and starts running. ]
[ The mental image of rats in a maze occurs to her, and she shakes it off. They're going to get out of this. Never mind that, presumably, the only way out is through the courtyard, which is sure to be crawling with guards, and possibly innocent people. Never mind that they have no idea where they're going, and are up against unknown numbers. They've gotten out of worse scrapes before. Probably.
Okay, she can't think of any right now, but she's sure they have.
As they run, she puts her rifle back into her digistruct device- running with that thing in one hand is just asking for it- and out comes her little Jakobs pistol.
She's keeping her eyes out for doors, vents, anything. Oddly, she swears she can smell laundry detergent, and if that's the case, then the laundry is as good as anywhere to hide.
But the laundry is below them, apparently, because there's another door- by the look of it, another laboratory-like room- and just out side of it, a square, metal door set about waist-high in the wall. ]
[ If she could see it, his expression would be screaming, "Are you fucking serious?" with just a hint of "Oh, fuck no." Because there's a weird, icy feeling that crawls into his veins at the idea of sliding down some dark, confining and suffocating space with walls on every side--
But it's their only option, and he knows it, and he holsters one of his blasters and yanks the door open for her. ]
Thankfully it's not a sheer drop, but the angle is still rather steep, and her tennis shoes don't have enough grip to slow her descent. As it is she goes careening into the darkness, and when she finally sees the light at the end of the tunnel, she braces for impact.
She lands in a bin of laundry, hard enough to send it toppling over (fucking action movies and their disregard for things like physics). For a moment she's trapped in a tangle in white linen, and she has to fight her way free. Once freed, she shoves everything back in the bin, and slides it back under the exit point of the chute as quickly as she can. ]
[ Okay, he's not like, right behind her? Because he has to convince himself that he's not going to get stuck in there, or that the chute isn't going to randomly close in around him and trap him and that, really, it's not that bad and it'll last maybe five seconds if that, and don't be a fucking coward, Peter--
Eventually sheer necessity forces his hand when he hears voices and the stamping of feet drawing closer. It's with an aggravated groan that he forces himself to jump down the chute, and he's damn lucky the door shuts behind him of its own accord, because he thinks he just heard someone rounding the corner--
But that doesn't matter because he's sliding down the chute and even with the lights in his mask it's really fucking dark and suddenly he's thirteen again and getting stuck in a ventilation shaft after the engineering crew on the Eclector sent him in there to help with repairs, and those bastards had left them in there as a joke and fuck if he gets stuck in here he's going to flip his shit--
It's only seconds he's in the damn thing, probably, but it feels like ages, and by the time he hits the laundry bin and tumbles to the ground, his breath is coming in short gasps and fuck this job, fuck everything about it. He slams his knuckles against the trigger to disengage his helmet and wrestles his way out of the sheets and he's not panicking you're panicking. ]
[ Never would she have pegged Peter as claustrophobic, but with the way he's breathing and flailing and clearly panicking, she can put the pieces together. He pulls the last sheet off his head and Maya's right there, hands on his shoulders ] Peter- Peter--
[ He grabs onto her hands, and he'll deny it later, but his grip is seriously clingy and desperate. But he nods at her direction and, yes, breathing's good. Breathing is a thing his lungs are supposed to do.
It takes a few moments before he just kind of sags with a mumbled apology, and a quick, "I'm fine," before looking around. ]
[ She takes his hand and gets to her feet- though once she's standing, she doesn't let go ] I still have my sweater in my digistruct. We're good.
Well, almost good.
[ She surges forward and kisses him- and honestly, it's a little desperate. She thought she was going to lose him, and then they were being chased and he had his mask on anyway, and dammit, she just needed to do this, okay? ]
[ -- Yep. This is okay. Totally okay, even if he does make a little surprised noise at first, but he relaxes into it, even if he's still jazzed up on fight-adrenaline and fear-adrenaline and we-need-to-talk-about-you-going-against-the-plan-adrenaline, but.
Screw it. Maya is here and they're not dead and, yeah, he needed that too. When he pulls back, he brushes her hair from her face. ]
[ She leans into his touch a little. It's nice, having a moment like this, even if it's fleeting, and coming on the heels of imminent danger. ] That's what I'm here for.
Yeah, I'd rather not spend any more time in the Laundry of the Damned than we have to.
[ There's shelves and shelves of sheets and pillowcases and bins everywhere. One set of double doors leads to what Maya presumes is where they do all the washing, but there's another door on the opposite end of the room. She grabs Peter's hand and leads him in that direction. ]
... If anything good has come out of this, though, it was kind of fun pretending to be married for a little bit.
[ -- URK, um, he literally stumbles at that, but it's only because he was busy twisting around, getting one of his blasters into the digistruct device. Honest. ]
I-- guess I hadn't really, either. [ But then again, he never saw himself in a steady, monogamous relationship, either, and here he is. ] I mean, in general terms, anyway. Just-- marriage is weird. Is all.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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She has no plan. She doubts Peter has much of a plan either, but that's beside the point. Man, she wishes Zer0 or Gamora were here. She doesn't really do stealth, but she's keeping her eyes open for a chance to start picking some of these assholes off. ]
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It's only when they have him restrained and disarmed that someone starts barking orders -- Get a collar. Get the boss -- and some of the guards split off from the main group. ]
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Deep breath Maya. She won't be saving anyone if she lets nerves get the best of her. She skirts back, keeping a fair distance from where they have Peter pinned. She can do this. She's fought her way through countless bandit camps. She helped defeat ths Warrior.
The first man to round the corner gets the butt of her gun slammed into his nose. While he's reeling, she puts a bullet in his head. Two more come around the corner, and one instantly goes up in her phaselock- he suffers the same messy death as the man earlier. His friend is close enough to get caught in the torrent of elements, but Maya shoots him too for good measure.
There's one left, but he's smart enough not to charge in blindly. That's when Maya switches out her HellFire for her sniper- it has a wicked-looking bayonet on the front- and she surges around the corner, driving the blade into his gut and pulling the trigger. He goes down, convulsing as electricity surges through him.
She rounds the corner, puts the sight to her eye and targets the guard pinning Peter down. With his head in her crosshairs she pulls the trigger. ]
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And what will happen when his team and the Nova Corps come in and see him fighting on the wrong side? They'll squish him like a bug, because he's Terran (or mostly, anyway), and he has nothing special about him, and fuck, he bets Gamora is gonna have an awesome time kicking his ass--
The head of the guard above him fucking explodes (gross), and he doesn't have time to think how or why or what in the ever-loving-fuck, just surges to his feet and fights hard and dirty and desperate. ]
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One gets too close to Peter for comfort, and she pops him up in her phaselock. Slag and flame and electricity and acid pour over the battlefield. The crowd is thinning, at least. She can only hope Peter gets out of there okay. ]
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He catches sight of her, finally, as he's ducking beneath a wild swing, and he sees his beloved blasters lying forgotten on the ground. He dives for them, grabbing them up and twisting onto his back to shoot at the guy he'd been tussling with -- not electricity this time, but bursts of fire lancing red hot into the man's chest, made all the more lethal by Maya's slag.
He twists again, aiming himself in Maya's direction, and slams the heels of his palms down onto the triggers for his jet boots. He skids along the ground on his back, firing at the guards as he goes.
He stops just short of her and gets to his feet. ]
I think we've stuck around long enough, sweetheart.
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She gives Peter something of a Look, which is all the warning he gets before she's in his face, jabbing a finger into his chest ]
Don't you ever do that to me again.
Now let's go.
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Okay, she can't think of any right now, but she's sure they have.
As they run, she puts her rifle back into her digistruct device- running with that thing in one hand is just asking for it- and out comes her little Jakobs pistol.
She's keeping her eyes out for doors, vents, anything. Oddly, she swears she can smell laundry detergent, and if that's the case, then the laundry is as good as anywhere to hide.
But the laundry is below them, apparently, because there's another door- by the look of it, another laboratory-like room- and just out side of it, a square, metal door set about waist-high in the wall. ]
Peter! Laundry chute!
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But it's their only option, and he knows it, and he holsters one of his blasters and yanks the door open for her. ]
Go! I'll be right behind you.
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[ And in she goes, feet first.
Thankfully it's not a sheer drop, but the angle is still rather steep, and her tennis shoes don't have enough grip to slow her descent. As it is she goes careening into the darkness, and when she finally sees the light at the end of the tunnel, she braces for impact.
She lands in a bin of laundry, hard enough to send it toppling over (fucking action movies and their disregard for things like physics). For a moment she's trapped in a tangle in white linen, and she has to fight her way free. Once freed, she shoves everything back in the bin, and slides it back under the exit point of the chute as quickly as she can. ]
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Eventually sheer necessity forces his hand when he hears voices and the stamping of feet drawing closer. It's with an aggravated groan that he forces himself to jump down the chute, and he's damn lucky the door shuts behind him of its own accord, because he thinks he just heard someone rounding the corner--
But that doesn't matter because he's sliding down the chute and even with the lights in his mask it's really fucking dark and suddenly he's thirteen again and getting stuck in a ventilation shaft after the engineering crew on the Eclector sent him in there to help with repairs, and those bastards had left them in there as a joke and fuck if he gets stuck in here he's going to flip his shit--
It's only seconds he's in the damn thing, probably, but it feels like ages, and by the time he hits the laundry bin and tumbles to the ground, his breath is coming in short gasps and fuck this job, fuck everything about it. He slams his knuckles against the trigger to disengage his helmet and wrestles his way out of the sheets and he's not panicking you're panicking. ]
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You're okay. Breathe. Just breathe.
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It takes a few moments before he just kind of sags with a mumbled apology, and a quick, "I'm fine," before looking around. ]
Okay. So. Evil laundry room.
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Looks like it.
Logically, there's got to be a way from here into the housing complex, right?
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What do you think, hide our gear and sneak out? [ His eyes flick over to her tattoos, and he amends, ] We'll need to swipe a coat.
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Well, almost good.
[ She surges forward and kisses him- and honestly, it's a little desperate. She thought she was going to lose him, and then they were being chased and he had his mask on anyway, and dammit, she just needed to do this, okay? ]
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Screw it. Maya is here and they're not dead and, yeah, he needed that too. When he pulls back, he brushes her hair from her face. ]
Thanks for the save.
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Hate to be That Guy, but we're still on the clock and still liable to get riddled full of bullet holes, so we'd better get going.
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[ There's shelves and shelves of sheets and pillowcases and bins everywhere. One set of double doors leads to what Maya presumes is where they do all the washing, but there's another door on the opposite end of the room. She grabs Peter's hand and leads him in that direction. ]
... If anything good has come out of this, though, it was kind of fun pretending to be married for a little bit.
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You think so?
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Yeah? It was just... I dunno. Not something I really thought about before?
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