by Harri-chan » Wed Jun 09, 2010 11:30 am
Despite the teenage girl towering above her, Charlotte was feeling more concerned for Mary Anne than herself. Her small arms wrapped around the girl's waist, hugging her tightly in return for the kiss to her forehead, "Can you follow the Hierarch? I want you to be safe... ", she said, reluctantly letting go of the hug. As the sound of more explosions reached them, she gently nudged Mary Anne towards the closet, "I'll be fine", she assured the maid, and tried to give her a confident smile, although her own fear still managed to show.
Her braided hair flicked around as she turned and hurried across the room, drawing a deep breath as she stepped out into the hall, where she broke into a run. Her mind was racing, a little voice at the back of it telling her how she was crazy for now fighting as part of the girl's defence after all those years of battling against them. Her cheeks went red as far taller girls in girl scout uniform with guns ran passed her in the halls, although none of them had time to make fun of her right now. Her knees started to shake a little as the realisation hit the base itself was now under attack, but she had her orders, to find the girl that had gone out in the mech, and had suddenly dropped out of communication.
The base still felt so foreign to her, not knowing her way around, other than the way to the medical lab. Whenever she came across a staircase, she took it upwards to the next floor, hoping that a route out would present itself soon. It was after climbing one set of stairs that she found herself standing in the open door way of small, narrow room, each wall lined with guns. Glancing about, she crept inside, her blue eyes wide at the amount of weapons on display. Pushing onto her toes, she tugged down one of the rifles, but even after pulling the strap around her neck, it felt large and awkward in her hands, reminding her of how small she was now, making her blush even more as she ran out from the room and down the hall.
The longer time went on, the more chaos she encountered, and the more her hope of getting outside faded. Her heart skipped a beat as she caught sight of Sarah, the attractive blonde that had treated her so cruelly when capturing her, back when she was a boy, now barking orders at a group of girls. Ducking around a corner to get out of sight, she realised she was shaking from head to toe. The fear was getting stronger, like she'd never felt before, and she thought she could even feel tears coming when she looked across the corridor, another open door revealing a shower room, which had been emptied upon the alarm being raised.
Racing across the corridor, she entered the room, her mary janes slipping on the wet tiles and her legs flying out from beneath her. She screamed and ended up on her backside on the wet floor, her legs spread out infront of her, and between them, was what she'd come looking for. The grill set in the tiles that the watered drained from. Her little fingers slipped between the gaps, and started to tug. It was heavy, her arms aching as she clenched her teeth and groaned, using all her strength to pull the grill out, leaving the square hole, only a foot wide in each direction, that dropped into a metal shaft, it's walls slick with water.
Charlotte glanced nervously back over her shoulder, towards the exit of the shower room, and then whimpered a little, wriggling closer to the hole, dropping her feet down into it, perching on the edge as she adjusted her large rifle, clutching it to her chest and wrapping both arms around it before wriggling her bottom over the edge. She dropped into the whole, her childish scream echoing up from it as she slid down the smooth side of the wet shaft, her chest tightening and her heart racing, a chill go through her entire body as the fall seemed to go on forever in the darkness before she plunged into a body of cold water at the bottom, still unable to see. The momentum from her long fall carried her right beneath the surface, and for a moment, she didn't know which way was up, spinning and twisting in the dark before being swept along by a current, which carried her backwards. She could feel her breath running out, now utterly gripped by fear, certain she'd met her end when she was flung out from the end of a large pipe that poked out of the perimeter wall, and tumbled another ten feet or so into a pool at the rear of the base, both headfirst and backwards, getting a mouthful of water as she again went beneath the surface. This time there was no current to fight, and seconds later she popped up, gasping for breath. Rubbing the water from her eyes, she looked up into the night sky, the gentle hum filling her ears from the machines that sucked water up from the poor and carried it through the girl's water purification system.
Still panting for breath, she paddled towards the edge of the pool, and crawled out onto the grass, soaked right through like a drowned rat, the large rifle still hanging against her body on the strap around her neck. She wasn't sure her heart would ever slow down as she lay there, in a state of shock, but forced herself up onto her hands and knees, squinting ahead of herself for any sign of life.