Elsie

October 10, 34 AE

5 days before Operation Cliffhanger

"It is about time you showed up here to pay me a visit," Hitomi grumbled as she led their group of friends—minus Bev and their newest member Ian—into her makeshift lab. "I was starting to think you all had forgotten about my gracious contributions to your dumpster fire of a country."

"How could we ever forget about you and your winning personality?" AJ muttered sarcastically as she eyed an unusual contraption that somehow looked both dismantled and functional at the same time.

"Do these winning personalities run in the family?" Minyoung added bitterly, not needing to look at Camilla to make it clear who he was referring to.

Before Elsie could smack him on the back of his head, Camilla and Hitomi answered.

"Yes," Camilla and Hitomi replied at the same time.

But Elsie still needed to get her own jab in, and she elbowed Minyoung's left bicep, exactly where she had seen a bruise forming during their training earlier that day. In response, Minyoung hissed and glared at her while shielding his arm protectively.

"What?" he whispered sharply.

"Play nice," Elsie scolded him.

"Anyway," Hitomi continued. "If you are all done making comments, I would like to show you my creations."

She continued leading them to a long table along the far wall of her lab, its counter covered in a variety of gadgets.

"First, updated communicators," she announced as she held up a small black earpiece that Elsie recognized from their mission in San Francisco. "It has an improved range from the Alliance's current ones, and should have better reception throughout the prison's infrastructure. And after working with those... 'Telepathy Twins'? I was able to have it sync with the frequencies they use in case we need to all change channels. They also said that would allow them to help monitor our lines for signs of unauthorized access."

Mack let out a low whistle while everyone else simply looked at Hitomi with wide eyes. Even Minyoung looked mildly impressed for once.

"But wait, there is more!" Hitomi teased before picking up a watch-like device. "Upgraded Watch-Outs! They are synced to the communicators to allow transmissions on friendly frequencies. I was also able to add a small version of those ability proximity sensors to it—yes, thank you Minyoung and Jordan for those—and tweaked it a bit to show more detail about what type of ability it is sensing."

To demonstrate, she showed them the large watch face. One second, it had nothing but a blank grid overlaid on a black screen; the next, there was a red circle slightly above the center with the characters "CT4" in the middle.

"'CT4'?" Jordan chimed in. "That's... passive and active cell manipulation, right?" He beamed proudly as he looked between the rest of them. "I remember that! From the training!"

Elsie did her best to offer a congratulatory smile to match his enthusiasm—after all, she hadn't even bothered to memorize the different meta codes herself—but she was one of the few who even reacted at all. Aside from her, Minyoung just rolled his eyes and sighed loudly, while Mack gave him a one-armed hug and a pleased grin.

"The person has to be using an ability for the sensor to produce an alert though," Hitomi continued. "Which is why it is not showing everyone here right now. So it should be good to stop most surprise meta attacks, but possibly not all."

After she returned the watch to the table, she picked up a couple of thick, silver bangles.

"These are smaller versions of the inhibitor collars," Hitomi explained. "Unfortunately, the collars only work so well because they are placed so close to the brain, while these are placed around the wrist or ankle. They will only dampen abilities, but not stop them completely."

"We're not testing that one out," AJ muttered bitterly.

Camilla hummed in agreement.

"Moving on then," Hitomi said, picking up a small black box the size of a cell phone. "Stunners! Jab someone with this, press this button here, and a jolt of electricity will put them down for a few seconds. It will even take their abilities offline for a moment as well."

Finn leaned in close to it, curious. "Oh, so it's like a taser?" he asked innocently.

Hitomi didn't answer immediately, since she was too busy scowling irately at him instead.

"I mean... yes..." she finally managed to say through gritted teeth before tossing it haphazardly back onto the table. "It is a work in progress."

"She forgot tasers existed," Camilla muttered to Elsie as they watched Hitomi move on to the next device.

"Right," Hitomi quickly continued, and she picked up what looked to be armored arm warmers. "These are improved biobatteries. I expanded them from the smaller watch model to increase the surface area. These can hold more energy, replenish energy faster while under sunlight, and make it easier to absorb energy from them."

"Would you be able to add some sort of limiter on it?" Mack asked. "I always end up taking too much energy from those things and killing all the poor little cells in them."

Hitomi sighed in frustration and glared at Mack. "Look, Mackenzie. My background is in computer and chemical engineering, and that is neither. You are lucky that I even managed to do this much on something so closely related to biology. I hate biology; everything is alive, and living things do not make any sense. So instead of pestering me with your unnecessary requests, maybe you should learn to control your abilities better instead."

Mack frowned, and looked like a scolded child as he averted his eyes to the ground.

"A simple 'no' would've been fine," he muttered sadly as Jordan rubbed one of his arms comfortingly.

"If there are no additional ungrateful comments," Hitomi proceeded. "I have one more item that I hope will meet your extraordinarily high standards."

Her last creation initially looked like a heap of black fabric. It wasn't until she held it up and unfolded it that Elsie realized it was akin to a guardian uniform.

"My company had been working on a prototype for a while, before everything went sideways," Hitomi explained. "I may not have a company after all of this is over, but at least I have perfected this.

"The fabric is designed to be a resilient, low-weight armor. It can absorb about half of the impact of a punch, or if you get thrown against a wall. Against sharp weapons or other projectiles with small surface areas, it will diffuse the force of the impact over a larger area. You may still get some bruising as a result, but that is better than a stab wound, no? Just do not go running in front of a bullet or anything. That would have enough force to break the fabric, and then you are out of luck."

"It looks fantastic," Mack said, but the enthusiasm he added to it sounded way too forced for someone who was supposedly a professional actor. "But... there are different sizes, right?"

It admittedly did look more like something made for a child, but Hitomi merely rolled her eyes.

"Of course there is, Mackenzie," Hitomi replied back, annoyed. "What do you take me for?"

She held out the uniform towards Camilla and asked her something in Japanese. In response, Camilla stared at the fabric for one second, then at Hitomi for another, before sighing loudly. Once Camilla roughly took the clothes, Hitomi smiled smugly and gestured dramatically to one of the corners of her lab where a makeshift changing area had been set up.

"The rest of the outfit is already back there!" Hitomi added chipperly as Camilla trudged over to change.

It took a few minutes for Camilla to get dressed, and the others filled the time by getting closer looks at the other tech Hitomi just showed them. Elsie was only mildly interested in the fancy devices, so she was the first to see Camilla cautiously emerge from the changing area. While Elsie's first instinct was to praise Hitomi's work, her words got caught in her throat once she got a good look at Camilla.

Some time had passed since Elsie had last seen Camilla in a guardian uniform; that had to be the biggest reason as to why Elsie was caught off-guard as much as she was. Elsie had always enjoyed how Camilla looked so effortlessly attractive in her uniform, and Hitomi's version was no exception.

The fitted black fabric tightly hugged the contours of her petite figure, sculpting everything from her muscular legs to her toned arms. Even though parts of her outfit were bulked up with additional protective layers and spaces to stash her tactical gear, it simply added to the attractiveness with a hint of badassery.

When Camilla tugged self-consciously at the stand-up collar, Elsie was entranced by the way her slender fingers gently fiddled with the fabric. And even after Camilla dropped her hand down to readjust her tactical belt, Elsie's gaze couldn't help but stay focused on the curves of Camilla's neck and the way her smooth skin disappeared beneath the dark fabric.

"Miss Bates," Hitomi's stern tone snapped Elsie out of her daydreams.

"Wha'?" Elsie replied dumbly, belatedly realizing that her mouth was hanging open.

"Are you still with us?" Hitomi asked, but while her voice sounded strict, her expression seemed amused.

A couple seconds passed before Elsie remembered she was supposed to answer.

"Yeah, I'm totally with you," Elsie quickly improvised. "Yeah, I'm here. It looks amazing, Hitomi. Well, not amazing—I mean, it looks fine. Good, even. Good work. Nice work. Yeah."

"Smooth," Minyoung muttered.

"A-plus performance," Jordan grinned.

"I mean, I know I've gotten a little scrawnier recently..." Camilla trailed off as she continued tugging at certain parts of the outfit.

"That's not it," Elsie hurriedly said, and she felt her face grow warm at all the eyes that were watching her expectantly. "It does look amazing. Like, really amazing. Too amazing, in fact. It's distracting."

Camilla narrowed her eyes at Elsie, confused. "I'm... sorry?"

"Your girlfriend thinks you're hot, Wyatt," AJ abruptly stepped in. "Just own it."

At AJ's words, Camilla raised an eyebrow at Elsie, as if she wanted to hear Elsie's opinion for herself. But Elsie was already struggling to keep herself from cowering in humiliation, and she shielded her downcast eyes with her hand so she couldn't see anything but the floor.

"It's true," Elsie mumbled.

Elsie kept her gaze fixed to the ground as everyone else chuckled happily at her misery. She wished she could disappear right then and there, until she noticed a pair of black combat boots appear in her vision. Curiosity and surprise won over her embarrassment, and Elsie nervously lifted her gaze.

Camilla was in front of her, a pleased smile on her face. And right below it was that stand-up collar that perfectly framed her slim neck—

Bad, Elsie. Focus.

"Well, I'll take that as a compliment then," Camilla said happily.

Then, much to Elsie's surprise, she took another step closer and wrapped her arms around Elsie's waist. At that simple gesture, Elsie's brain nearly short-circuited, and she didn't know what to do with herself. What she did know was that she was on the brink of losing her mind, and she forced herself to reduce her physical contact with Camilla as much as possible, even going as far as awkwardly keeping her arms slightly raised above her sides.

"But it won't be too distracting, will it?" Camilla continued innocently. "If it is, then I should probably wear something else..."

"Don't!" Elsie abruptly exclaimed, and she blushed furiously as she heard Jordan and Mack snickering in the background. "I mean, it's fine. You don't have to. Please don't."

Elsie knew Camilla was merely teasing her, and Camilla's widening smirk only confirmed that. But Elsie didn't mind, and she eventually composed herself enough to hold Camilla in return and pull her close. With that, Camilla chuckled lightly and turned her head towards Hitomi, who was eyeing them smugly.

"I think we like it," she confirmed chipperly as she hugged Elsie tightly for good measure.

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Rogue Guardians Headed East, Org Reports
Published October 12, 34 AE at 7:16 AM PDT

The group of rogue guardians that deserted the American Protection Organization in August are suspected to be headed east, the APO reported this morning.

In an early morning press conference, Captain Amira Pala, the lead guardian in the case, released satellite images to the public showing strong evidence that the rogue group was moving eastwards, debunking rumors that they were residing in areas such as Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. The images show a storm-like weather pattern slowly moving from Montana, near the Rocky Mountains, to just south of the Great Lakes over the course of ten days.

Based on the images and first-hand accounts from residents in affected areas, experts believe that there is no possible way such weather conditions could be a result of an act of nature. The APO believes the rogue group is creating this unusual weather for cover as they move cross country.

This new evidence comes over a month after the APO reported anomalies at the US-Canada border, suggesting possible whereabouts of the rogue guardians.

"We believe that [the border anomalies] were a misdirection," Pala said when asked about the earlier reports. "They were a cowardly attempt to keep us distracted and bracing for an attack, while they hid secretly in the shadows, waiting for a better chance to strike."

When asked why the rogue group would be moving east, Pala declined to comment, citing the confidentiality of mission details.

Experts, however, believe that the group is planning on making a stand at the nation's capital, judging by the scale of the attacks Exodos had instigated on multiple occasions last year. Many believe that the rogue guardians are or have always been allied with Exodos, and this latest evidence further supports this claim. Last December, APO forces subdued a large portion of the remaining Exodos forces at their Yellowstone hideout, just south of where the storm anomaly formed.

The APO asks all residents in the projected path of the rogue guardians to be on the lookout for any unusual activity. The group is considered extremely dangerous and is suspected to be in possession of hostages. Should you encounter any of the alleged individuals, pictured below, notify authorities immediately by dialing 911, and avoid any attempts to apprehend the suspects.

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