[Jayde Moon]

Maintaining her invisibility, Chante sprinted full bore towards the bulldozer, leaping up to grab a hold of it.  It wasn't the most graceful maneuver, but she got on board.  Then she scrambled to put as much bulldozer between herself and any bullets while maintaining a safe space in the front to crash through the fence.  Once she got to the woodline, she'd be able to scramble on and release the Spirit of Air from it's own fight.

[rednblack]

The extensive sensor suite on the Dragon gives Shiriki a full view of the airfield beneath him as one of the Doberman drones looks on.  And that's about as close to confused as a dog brain ever gets, Shiriki thinks, waiting for the command to be issued to fire.  He crosses over its field of vision, and approaches the battlefield wondering how long it's going to take the spider to realize just how thoroughly Ité was able to frag up their systems something fierce before he's -- again, chummer, you got a female SO.  Knock that backward drek off -- able to launch an effective defense.

The resident magicians are much more on the ball.  Shiriki sees two earth spirits, as large as the mechanical equipment they're replacing, turn and head north toward the fence, sees his green friendlies tags right in their path of approach.  He keys up his armaments, so in tune with his machine it's like breathing it to life, and simultaneously moves three reticles, a darker red one indicating the assault canon.  Before he fires the blizzard below warps and solidifies, a crackle of lightning emanates below and spiderwebs its way across the back of the earth elemental, who in turn hurls a boulder straight through it.

Shiriki clicks off the assault canon reticle and focuses a quick burst of fire with one down on top of the first elemental and swings it to join the second, which he tears to inert chunks of Kansas clay with a sustained burst from both barrels.

Checking his six, Shiriki sees the soldiers pouring forth from the barracks, getting closer by the second, and sees one of the dobermans from the airfield wheeling its way toward his position at full speed.  He'd like to send a barrage of warning fire at the feet of the approaching soldiers, but he doesn't have the ammo to spare.  Instead, he wheels in a slow arc around, and reactivates the reticle for his assault canon.

[GloriousRuse]

SFC Benson was watching the night turn to shit, and in a hurry. The el-tee, like most new LTs, had decided he was going to go muck around with a simple guard shift because he wanted to prove he was sharing the burdens. That's what they always said. Benson knew they really just wanted a chance to play soldier while they still could. He'd been ok with it, course. A few months in and he seemed competent enough, as officers went, and did a decent job keeping the CO and therefore the 1SG happy. Besides, this static guard was really NCO business...wouldn't hurt anyone if the LT was out in the snow for a few minutes. It wasn't like he had anything better to do, right?

The problem with that line of thinking became instantly apparent now that the LT was probably dying, the night was being torn apart with explosions, and the goddam gunship that was supposed to be on their side was tearing up the earth spirits that were on their side, and bluntly, half his boys were shooting just to shoot. Which wasn't actually a bad reaction.

SFC Benson was struck with the sudden  realization that it is always easy  to critique the decisions of the  guy above  you, advise in your own field, often for training events you had already practiced a dozen times, and then view the results in hindsight.

Turned out those decisions could be a bit harder when you were the one making them. He vaguely understood that he probably had the mental focus to either direct the local fight or try to coordinate with all the support that should be out there, but probably not both at once. Trust the basic reactions of his platoon for half a minute while he brought down the wrath from on high and get a drilled response, or try to execute a hasty plan with what he had at the cost of waiting a bit to call in support?

[Jayde Moon]

Decisions, decisions...

The dump truck had smashed through the fence and shorted everything, so the bulldozer was able to bring her right up to the woodline.  Chante leapt from the Bulldozer and into the trees.  She was moving towards the helicopter and reflected that it may be best to send the bird one way while the team made off in a different direction.  Let the UCAS chase the wrong thing.  If they launched a missile and took down the bird with all of them on it, that would be horrible.

If they took it down without them on it, then the team would have the time of the chase and the time it took UCAS to get to the crash site and realize there weren't any bodies.

Decisions...

@Team: What are your thoughts on sending the bird northwest while we hoof it direct to the border?  We might find a ride on the way, we might not... but good chance they just shoot that bird down rather than let it cross.  I'd rather not be on it.>>

[Tecumseh]

All Hell is breaking loose. The good news is that generally matches your job description and usually indicates that you're doing what you are paid to do. The trick is to keep Hell targeted and direct, and pointed away from you at all times.

Swoopy is doing a pretty good job of this until he zigs when he should have zagged. Some PFCs behind him are hosing down the forest on full-auto when a lucky (or unlucky) round finds Swoopy's back. The technical ceramics shatter as they are designed to do, turning into a very hard powder that effectively serves as a personal sand bag for Swoopy. He spills into the snow, rounds continuing to rip the air overhead, before the inevitable change of magazine gives him a few seconds to get on his feet and put a tree in between himself and the base.

After confirming that the Dragon is outside the blast radius, Swoopy thumbs his detonator. There is a sharp CRACK representing the front of compressed gases, followed by a deeply-satisfying subsonic ROAR of the blast wind's negative pressure. Swoopy hears cries of alarm and perhaps injury; the suppressive fire does not resume. Swoopy puts his synthcardium back to work as he dashes through the snow.

On the other side of the base, the dump truck and bulldozer start racing for the fence at Ité's command. Under the cover of invisibility, Chante runs to intercept them. Either because it's moving slower or because it's easier to jump aboard, she chooses the bulldozer for her steed. It turns out to be a prudent choice when the dump truck hits the fence first. There is an electrical explosion and a massive shower of sparks as the fence shorts out and the dump truck's internal electronics are fried. By the time the bulldozer connects, the fence has as much current as cold glass. Chante keeps her eyes up, lest the monowire running across the top of the fence drop onto her like a guillotine, but second later she's at the treeline and running like mad.

<<@Team [Chante] What are your thoughts on sending the bird northwest while we hoof it direct to the border?  We might find a ride on the way, we might not... but good chance they just shoot that bird down rather than let it cross.  I'd rather not be on it.>>

<<@Team [Ité] No automated SAMs in the area. The base has an Onotari Interceptor and a Panther assault cannon in its inventory. 400 klicks to McConnell. Give them three minutes to scramble, one minute to accelerate, sixteen minutes to cover. That gives us twenty minutes to not be here. Alternatives: passing cars on Highway 36, the municipal airport in St. Francis. The local rail line comes in from the east and terminates in St. Francis so that's no good.>>

Behind Chante, the first wave of guards is breaking out of their guard shacks and turning their weapons on the one thing they can see: the Dragon gunship that Shiriki is piloting. Except they can't really see it: the down-draft is kicking up snow like mad, which mixes with the blizzard and basically turns conditions into a total white-out. The soldiers can hear it though, especially with Dragon's Stoner-Ares M202s opening up on the earth elementals. The soldiers and the Dobermen point their assault rifles at the sky and wave them around like Jackson Pollock paintbrushs, but all they hit is empty sky. Shiriki bobs and weaves and makes the Dragon's engines scream, but remains unharmed.

The Stoner-Ares M202s turn one of the earth elementals into kibble and tear out generous chunks of the other before it decides enough is enough and takes the battle to the Dragon. The elemental dematerializes and zips into the Dragon on the astral before rematerializing. The shift in weight is enough to make Shirki feel like he swallowed a rock, which is not far from the truth. The earth elemental raises its fist to punch a hole through the Dragon's electronics but is arrested mid-swing by Chante's sky eagle arriving in the nick of time. The elemental roars and spins on the spirit, which dives directly into the elemental's face and discharges 1.21 gigawatts. The elemental cries out in agony as it tries to tear the eagle off its face, but the eagle simply dives under the clumsy swing and plunges its beak into the elemental's back. The elemental collapses under its Promethean fate, shedding its physical coil to return to its home plane.

<<@Team [Ité] Here comes the wet t-shirt contest!>>

The barrack doors fly open and half-naked men and women begin to pour out. They are sopping wet and instantly frigid, but they are also armed and represent a potential wall of lead that might be more than even Shiriki can avoid. They stagger out into the snow, waving their weapons around in search of a valid target.

<<@Ité [Shiriki] Ité, can you drop into AR and haul my hoop to the extraction point?>>

Instead of an affirmative response, there's a foreboding moment of silence.

<<@Team [Ité] I'm link locked! Something has its fangs in deep!>>

An unnerving rumble begins to shake the ground. It's perceptible even through the snow and over the gunfire and explosions. The soldiers seem to feel it too, as there are even more shouts of alarm than there were before. The ground shakes like an earthquake as one of the buildings on the base begins to implode, seemingly of its own accord.

Edit: removed reference to there being a rail line to the south, because if you go south you'll cross the Sioux border anyway. There are Sioux borders in every direction except east.

[GloriousRuse]

Swoopy reached the edge of the woodline, looking out into the snow for the field where the mal-appropriated gunship was supposed to land. It was, perhaps not surprisingly, very absent. That gave a certain new weight to both the questions Chante was throwing about on the net, as well as the increasing roar of gunfire to the south. Combined, these three independent and not all that alarming things were slowly coalescing to reveal a problem.

There were plenty of good, solid, rational reasons for opting in favor of a quick dash in the helicopter or a nice and short 20 klick E&E. Seemed reasonably even - both were essentially betting that the group could get across the border before the Anglos could get the appropriate shit together to come find and kill them. Then Ite started freaking out about something with teeth. Maybe riding around in a very clearly networked helicopter when the other side was brain smoking your deckers wasn't what most people would think of as a good idea.

He pulled out an actual, no shit, honest to god physical map and started plotting options...

...which weren't bad, but weren't great.

North and west stood out as the most obvious ones. The distances were short, real short. 25 klicks to the north, 20 to the west. Good roads in each direction..two lane highways that hadn't been improved - too much border tension and not enough economic incentive - but had been maintained on both sides just in case they needed to move stuff up fast.. The north road was actually closer to 30 km when you figured in the dog legs, but the west was a straight shot. If you had transport with wheels, twenty minutes max. Probably fast enough to get to the border before someone could spin up all the really nasty stuff. Not that that stuff wasn't fast, but the humans behind it were slow, sleepy, and hopefully still trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

If they did spin up in time, anything hauling ass for the sioux border on the highway was likely to be throw a lot of red flags. Specially as it wasn't like the Joneses just needed to nip out at 3 am in a blizzard to check on their long lost injun friends.  Still, the UCAS probably wouldn't just light up a civilian vehicle inside their own border without some confirmation. Right? The whole "dialogue" phase of that would buy you a last chance if it came down to it.  Or maybe the last kilometer to get across the border.

On foot things looked a bit different. it'd be 3 hours west and 4 to the north on a good day - today wasn't a good day. The weather and night alone might double it, and an enemy interfering could make it into a multi day excursion, moving painfully slowly across the barren Kansas plains. No people, no cover, just moving irrigation ditch to irrigation ditch with your electronics off and air gapped clothes/blankets to beat the astral as best you could. Which was probably a losing proposition up close, but each hour would give the enemy more search area to cover and a better chance that a spirit just didn't come close enough to pick up the radiant life. If one landed right on top of you...well...problems. And if the enemy found a merry band of wanderers on the kansas plain, they had all the time in the world to solve that problem..Swoopy had no doubts that the first drones would be arriving before he could go three klicks, or someone would just vaporize him from 6,000m up. The old "eye in the sky which fires missiles" ,despite the medias portrayal of hollywood machines which were just hard enough to give your protagonist a "fair fight" in close,  remained an incredibly effective and completely unanswerable way to murder some isolated dudes on the dirt.

Of the cut and run options, looked like a fast way out by car - send another as a decoy the other way if you could - was best. The terrain just didn't support modern E&E against a committed opponent. 

Or there was a third way. Smash and grab a few vehicles, send them out to draw off eyes, and go to ground. Wait for the stink to blow over, find a way out in a few days.

Swoopy hand't heard anything on the net the for a good long while now, and that becmae the real decision point. If the CPT and some matrix support were still alive, a hell ofr leather race for the border could probably work. If not...well...without the matrix and astral covered, Swoopy didn't figure it'd end well for him. Then it would be time to drop the tactical gear, pop out the fake SIN, and be a pale face for a few days...

[MDMann]

Konrad Kurtz was having the best night of his life.

This morning he'd gotten a letter from home. His sister Chelsea was getting married, even better her intended had a job as security for one of the corps back home. He wouldn't be the only one in the family to escape the barrens. He'd probably get special leave to attend the wedding too, which was nice.

After chow he got called into the commandants office. He'd looked even meaner than usual. He'd thought of half a dozen misdemeanours he could have been caught for and was about to be chewed out over. And, he'd been so careful too. Then he'd noticed the first sergeant in the corner glowering and started thinking of a whole lot more serious things he could have been caught in. So, time to play dumb and admit nothing or beg for mercy? He'd gone with dumb in the end. It was the right call, after grilling him about life in general they'd handed him his papers. As of next week he'd be posted as sergeant. Then they'd both laughed and offered him smiles. It looked positively unnatural on the top sarges face. The officer was more natural. It freaked him more than anything. They couldn't say if he'd be reassigned or not. Who knew? The bustard had then given him the afternoon off, the fragger.

Naturally, he'd gone and gotten drunk. His mates from the other squads had joined him. In time honoured fashion they'd proceeded to get him blotoed. Little Catty Ramirez mad made eyes at him all night too. A hellion that one and a social climber. Wouldn't trust her at all. Certainly he wouldn't sleep with her. No matter how cute she was. Still it massaged his ego nicely.

Then the top had come and found them and balled them all out dragging (litteraly dragging, that sonofabitch was one mean orc) him away before slamming him into a wall and inviting him to the sergeants poker game that evening. From about three inches away and screaming.

He'd gone later to discover the old man had been called up to DC about something or other, leaving his aides in charge. Or the sergeants who ran things anyway. Never had he met such a bunch of cheating, depraved, lowdown lying scum. Still, he'd come away from the night up 50 credits. And very drunk. Apparently they'd suspected him of all sorts (only most of which he was guilty of) but couldn't prove it. Which was why he'd gotten his step. They stories they told. He couldn't believe any of them.

He almost thought his Dick had grown three inches last night.

Then he'd crawled off to bed. Later pans were bashing, people were jumping and squaddies were screaming. No, that was the alarm. He looked at his chrono. Under 3 hours sleep. Of course, the bustard had called a drill! Catty was shaking his arm urgently, stark naked (he hadn't had he? He had). Blearilly he looked around, his head pounding, hair throbbing. That was an explosion! Naked he grabbed his weapons and stumbled into the snow. Milling around him were the company, in various states of dress. If he was lucky something would kill him before the gorilla stopped jumping inside his eyeballs and the snakes were done eating his guts. Throwing up, he started to organise the men and move off towards the sound of gunfire...

[rednblack]

Chante's air spirit sends the hulk of Kansas clay back to the ether, and the Dragon jumps again, sending Shiriki's guts back into his throat from half a klick away, which is impressive in its own right.  Through the feed on his roto-drone, Shiriki can see the team starting to assemble near the rendezvous point, and he contemplates Chante's suggestion about an alternate mode of travel.

<<@Team [Shiriki] Taxi is almost there.  I think we have enough lead to get Sioux-side.>>

He guns flies north, leaving the soldiers and dobermans behind him near the fence, gaining enough altitude to render their small arms ineffective, and descends sharply.  He picks up the rotors shortly before impact, but it still jars him, temporarily scrambling the vid feeds.  He pops the pilot's doors, and sends his roto-drone south to delay the oncoming UCAS boys and girls, which dutifully whirs itself off.  Shortly, he can see the ammo counts ticking down.  Fly straight and true, and maybe even make your way back home, there.

<<@Team [Shiriki] Cargo door is down.  You'll need to use the pilot's to get in.  Advise if cargo door can be repaired midflight>>

[Tecumseh]

Kurtz was having a day for the ages, but that was yesterday. His luck expired at midnight it looks like his Edge didn't refresh.

His head is pounding, his tongue is thick, and there's SO MUCH NOISE! All he wants is a shower and one of those Typhoon shakes that Ares makes; the "Ronin" or "Kakyū" flavors were fine, but "Gaijin" was his favorite.

He gets his first wish when the sprinkler systems go off and he is hit with a torrential downpour from the ceiling.

"Get those turned off!" he shouts to nobody in particular in his first, ineffectual display of authority as sergeant.

There's heavy gunfire outside. Kurtz reaches out and grabs the first thing he sees, a Cavalier Deputy revolver. He pulls on some boxers out of habit, even though they are drenched, and slings on an armor vest while his wet feet slap the floor as he runs to the door. There's a big jam-up there as a half-dozen similarly wet, similarly ill-equipped soldiers try to break down the doors from the inside out.

There's an override switch somewhere but the facility is new, Kurtz is still drunk, and he can't remember where exactly it is. "Stand back!" he says, then steps forward and pumps four rounds into the door locks. As a classic example of government contracting, the doors were designed to be bulletproof from the outside but not the inside. The lock shatter and the doors burst open.

Kurtz immediately regrets his decision. Frozen winds blast in through the open doors and connect with his wet skin. There's a icy feeling in his gut that feels like he's being shivved in the abs by Mother Nature. Aware that the others are looking to him for leadership, he runs outside, his bare feet immediately cold against the powdery snow.

The base is in chaos. The construction equipment is driving itself around; a dump truck hits the electric fence and sends up a giant fountain of white sparks. A bulldozer connects a moment later and slices through the fence before plowing into the forest. One of the Ares Dragons is flying off, but in the confusion Kurtz isn't sure who is flying it or why. He hopes that it's in pursuit of whatever goddamn miserable sonuvabitch is responsible for him being outside in a blizzard in little more than wet boxers. Unfortunately, that hope is somewhat undermined by the fact that several soldiers and Dobermen are blindly firing in the direction of the Dragon as it retreats.

"Set up a perimeter!" Kurtz shouts over the mayhem, grabbing a couple soldiers and pushing them toward the fence. "You, cover the holes in the fence! You, cover the treeline! You, go get the night-vision goggles from the - !"

Kurtz's orders are interrupted by a burst of automatic fire from an unseen rotodrone. A round of stick-n-shock connects with hits nuts, sending him spilling face-first into the snow with his hands stuffed between his legs. For good measure, another round connects with his upturned hoop. He groans in agony, the convulsions of his muscles intermixing with the violent shivering triggered by the screaming wind.

The soldiers' training kicks in and they hit the snow to avoid the covering fire. Then they respond with blind fire of their own, riddling the dark forest with bullets, their imaginations running wild with legions of advancing Sioux soldiers sweeping out of the blackness. The storm was almost certainly the Great Ghost Dance, oh frag.

"Where's our magical support?!" Kurtz bellows into his comms, or at least he thinks he does. He might be slurring most of his words. "We need backup assistance now! Now, goddamn it, NOW!!"

With the Dragon gone as an obvious target, the soldiers generally shoot the shit out of the trees. Dan-Dan continues sprinting, his magic keeping him on top of the snow and moving quickly. The occasional shot cuts through a nearby tree but for the most part there's no real need to duck. Chante, however, does feel the need to drop and crawl at regular intervals. She knows they can't see her, but that doesn't mean that one of them can't get lucky.

<<@Team [Ité] Spiders starting to pour in! I'm losing control one-by-one. They'll have their drones back soon, and turrets not long after that! It won't be long before the remote magicians start dumping spirits in all over the place, or start tracking us on the astral! We have to get out now! Shiriki, yank the damn wire out of my head if you have to!>>

[Jayde Moon]

Scrambling best she can, half on all fours, Chante moves quickly.  Snow bursts up near her as several bullets blindly seek her flesh.

<<@Team [Shiriki] Taxi is almost there.  I think we have enough lead to get Sioux-side.>>

Alright, if Shiriki thinks we can do it...

She trusted her men, more than she trusted herself, even.  In the end, every frag up was hers and every success was theirs, so she made the calls, but she made them based on the experience of the guys.

"GET TO THA CHOPPA!" she cried as she continued to scramble through a hailstorm of bullets.  She could make it out ahead, just needed to not be shot for a few more seconds...

[GloriousRuse]

Swoopy watched as the chopper touched down. Sort of. Looked like it had definitely seen better days, and that wasn't the prettiest landing - but Ares built'em tough, had to say that.  It looked like Shiriki was keeping the blades at near max RPM for a touch and go. Which works just fine when you're getting off the bird. Getting on, there are reasons why this might not be considered "safe."

Like the fact you were running semi-blind through rotor wash blown snow towards a pair of engines kicking off unpleasant exhaust while the blades dipped down to just above average human head height at certain parts of the rotation. Not really an issue with a crew chief or even a TAC AI highlight on where you were supposed to go, done at a walking pace. Based solely on eyeball, experience, and done at a jog through a nighttime blizzard...chicks dig scars, right?

 

[MDMann]

Dan ran through the woods as the chopper touched down in the clearing ahead, the back draft of its rotators kicking the snow into a local blizzard, complete with leaves, twigs and other lethal debris. It settled with a heavy crunch,  as its local storm died down. Daniel wasn't sure he could hear tortured metal screaming, or ominous clangs and crunches but watching the landing as he drifted over the snow towards it, he thought he should have.

No matter it was down.

<<@Team [Shiriki] Cargo door is down.  You'll need to use the pilot's to get in.  Advise if cargo door can be repaired midflight>>

All good then.

Dan ran on, lightly sprinting over the morning snows. Running, he dashed Catlike up a tree at the edge of the clearing, his medical supplies thumping reassuringly on his back. Running he leapt off an outstretched branch. It couldn't support his weight, but it didn't need to as he danced nimbly along it, using it as a springboard into the night.

It was far too far to get aboard of course. He tucked and rolled with his landing, the momentum propelling him forwards and against the edge of the pinging metal. He rolled up the side of the craft and grasping, pulled himself over the lip of the side door. Grinning and gasping he took a breath before pointing his riffle out the door and starting the laborious process of unwinding a rope ladders down the side of the craft. Hopefully, the team would come to this side of the bird. They only had a choice of two. He pinged it on the tacnet.

<<@Team [Ité] Spiders starting to pour in! I'm losing control one-by-one. They'll have their drones back soon, and turrets not long after that! It won't be long before the remote magicians start dumping spirits in all over the place, or start tracking us on the astral! We have to get out now! Shiriki, yank the damn wire out of my head if you have to!>>

Looking at the readouts for the team Dan could see the trouble on Ite's vitals. Elevated stress levels, cortisone and adrenaline. With his high fitness levels he risked a coronary embolism. Was that a flutter on the electrocardiogram?

《No! Don't pull the cord, 》he screamed into the mic.

[rednblack]

After the dragon touched down, Shiriki jumped out and back to his meat body.  One second, he's coming down rough in the middle of a blizzard, 15,000 kg of pure force, tuned to his every desire, and the next he's back in his shallow wintry grave, shivering and wondering if frostbite is already starting to set in on his fingers.  He rolls over, kicking snow off himself as his eyes begin to focus, bleary from disuse even in the blackness of the night.  He checks his feeds, cues his flashlight and crawls over to Ité. 

He smacks him once across the face for good measure.  "Come on, you dumb hoop.  Get out of there."

Shiriki knows what he'll have to do.

Ité's comm is still fresh in his mind, and he pulls off Ité's ballistic mask and opens the front of his jacket, then pulls the medkit out from his ruck.  His fingers are numb, and he loses precious seconds fighting with the adhesive pads and getting them in place.  The injection port is easier, and once everything's in place, Shiriki grabs the cord to Ité's deck.  He takes a deep breath.  And as he pulls --

"No! Don't pull the cord," Dan Dan screams into the mic.

Ité's vitals plummet.  The medkit kicks on immediately, filling the dumpshocked decker with anti-coagulates, which will minimize the damage of the stroke now, but could cause major issues should the way out turn rough.  There isn't much Shiriki can do now, except hope that the meds do their job and keep Ité this side of breathing.  He waits two seconds, then three, then five, and when Ité doesn't crash on him, Shiriki jumps back into the dragon, his body falling limp into the soft embrace of the snow.

<<@Team [Shiriki] Everybody loaded up?  Good.  Now strap in, shut up, and hold on.>>

The Dragon lifts off into the night sky, and Shiriki plots a leapfrog trajectory to his and Ité's meat body.

<<@Team [Shiriki] Ité is stable but unresponsive.  That bay door operational yet?  I'm parking the bird north of the treeline, and we should be 20 meters due south.  I can get my own hoop out, but we'll need a two-man carry team for Ité.>>

[GloriousRuse]

Swoopy hooked just in time as the bird jumped up and started its path to Shiriki and a few hundred kilos of flesh that used to be Itty. It might still be, but the odds on that were, in Swoopy's opinion, getting lower by the minute. still, had to try. Swoopy scanned the troop compartment for anything that would help.

Looked like the UCAS spending spree hadn't extended to one of those auto-stretchers, whihc was more the pity. Carrying a dying troll was exactly the sort of job you wanted a specialized robotic mule with stabilization board and basic med-kit functions for. They did look like that had a basic first aid and recovery kit in back though, including an Ares SledSaver. This was an incredibly overpriced piece of fsemi-rigi, one side slippery one side sticky polymer with some restraints on it and holes for poles or rope if you wanted. You generally just wrapped up the poor SOB in it and dragged them across the ground if you weren't strong enough for carrying them. As the name implied, like a sled.

Swoopy decided that would have to do, trying to figure out how to detach it while the bird remained in flight. A quick glance through the instructions..."Not reccommended for spinal injuries." Thanks.

"Pull here to release" Promising.

"Look in art B of the diagrm for the optional carbon fiber poles for above ground carry" Ol, what fecking diagram? Oh, that one there. And there were the poles.

"Attach the poles through points 1 and 2..." Christ, like assmebling a toy on Christmas morning. Or anyhow, dad would say that. Swoopy had successfully avoided being held accountable for anyone who might need a toy assembled on Christmas morning. Not that many of the Sioux did Christmas. But the point was still valid.

The SledSaver was in ad-hoc stretcher mode by the time the bird started to descend and Swoopy waited for the touchdown...

[Tecumseh]

At the base, there's a flurry of activity. Or so you presume, because you can't see it, or hear it over the storm. It's reasonable to assume that something is happening in that general direction, but you don't know what.

Are there drones rolling out as an advance force, racing through the forest to your exact location? Perhaps. Are there kill squads being assembled and armed to the teeth, led by angry trolls with thermographic vision and gratuitous amounts of body armor? Most likely so. Is there a magician summoning a spirit who will pop out of the astral at any moment? Why not.

Shiriki yanks out the wire out of Ité's datajack and is rewarded for his efforts by a massive wave of unavoidable vomit. It splashes Shiriki's hands but the elf is nimble enough to avoid the rest of it. He quickly paws off the worst of it in the snow while fumbling through his bag for the things that will keep Ité on this side of Wakan Tanka.

Swoopy, ever resourceful, finds a sled of sorts, although even rolling Ité onto it seemed like a Sisyphean task. How the hell was this going to work?