Blue's Blues

[cloningblues]

[Nothing went right during the latest mission in La Gias. Denzel is dead. Setsuko, Toby, and the people they were sent to rescue have disappeared to some place unknown. Blue One took a crapload of damage, but that's the least of Asagi's worries right now. He stumbles towards a sitting area, slumps down on a chair, takes a stomach pill and lays his head on the table. Then, he slams his fist on it. The table, not his head.]

...It wasn't supposed to go like this.

Comments

[majestic_keiki]

Yeah, it wasn't. [Kei quickly joined him at the table, having been thoughtful enough to bring him a cup of tea before doing so. She didn't look like she was doing much better than him either.]

[actuallyselfish]

"Asagi!" Dido exclaims, rushing over to you in grease-stained overalls. "What happened? You alright?"

She hesitates. "No. You're clearly not alright..."

[cloningblues]

[Asagi's hand grabs the cup, but he does no effort to drink it. He doesn't even lift his head.]

...We need to find them.

[cloningblues]

Of course I'm not.

...That guy with the black robot showed up again. He killed Denzel. Setsuko and Toby are missing. We all would've died if Professor Shirakawa didn't save us. The mission... was a complete failure...

[actuallyselfish]

Dido hesitates, her face going blank...then tries to reach out and lightly hug Asagi.

[majestic_keiki]

Right. If we'd been able to control it when we left La Gias I would have tried looking for them to the edges of Purple-2s sensors...But I can't do that now.

We can try listening to what reports come in, though.

[herodrawing]

I thought the worst was supposed to be behind us now...

[kill_all_vagans]

For being called the "Unity Group"... we really haven't had much luck staying together have we?

[Sara, Kanade, Yancy, now this... just how bad is it going to get?]

[caressthedarkness]

Is there...anything we can do now?

[gold_four]

Seems to be a track record for us of late. The top brass won't exactly be happy with most of the results we've been having...

[Ataru in an awkward, delicate fashion, tries to ease Asagi's hand off the table.]

At least some of the bad guys have stayed relatively quiet.

[cloningblues]

Reports... Is that all we can do? Just wait?

[cloningblues]

[No resistance. No other physical reaction either, for that matter.]

What am I even supposed to do now...?

[cloningblues]

I thought so too. We were too optimistic, too stupid...!

[cloningblues]

If a single group tackles every single threat in the world then bad operations have to happen sometimes...

But why today! Damn... Setsuko, Toby... Where are you...

[cloningblues]

We have to find Setsuko and Toby, and those other missing people.

Only how we're going to do that...

[cloningblues]

[Asagi's hand offers no resistance.]

What are you trying to say? That this will happen all the time from now?

[gold_four]

No! No! Just... in reverse, right, it seems to be happening with most our deployments. Mr Beckett, Ms Amou, the Solaris woman, now this...

What's that saying in Izuru's comics? That's its always darkest before the dawn?

[kill_all_vagans]

They're alright though, right?

Whenever Setsuko went missing before she turned up okay somewhere else... so she's not going to wind up in a volcano?

[caressthedarkness]

Are there any members we can send out as a search party?

[Pause.]

But...do we know where to begin searching...?

[herodrawing]

There's... nothing stupid about hoping for the best.

[actuallyselfish]

"...do more training?" Dido muses. "That's what Ken did after that fight with the Indalph."

[cloningblues]

Training won't help me find Setsuko and Toby! Training won't bring Denzel back to life...!

[cloningblues]

And when is the best finally going to happen?

[cloningblues]

I... I don't know. It only happened twice before. And during one of them, she jumped to La Gias.

[cloningblues]

I don't know. They could be anywhere...

But there must be some way to find them! We can't just... abandon them...