Ask One More Time

[Jonathen Baize]

Music​

They were not in their usual bar. The Rusty Rifle was a great bar, the best bar even, but they didn't have karaoke, so Jon and Guin had to go elsewhere occasionally. The atmosphere was pretty great as Jon and Guin jumped off the stage after a song.

Jon had already had a few drinks and was feeling pretty good. "No! I promised Kali I wouldn't let you anywhere near a dart board!" he said with a laugh as he plopped down into a chair. The next person took the stage, and music started playing again.

As much as the future looked bright, he thought he might miss these nights. Jon didn't have many friends, and he considered Guin one of his closest. He hadn't told her his plans; in fact, no one knew except one or two people. He took a sip from his beer bottle. "Come on...it's your turn to pick a song..." he said, sliding her the song list.

There was a loud commotion from the group behind them, causing Jon to look over his shoulder. It was a group of Junior Officers in the Diplomatic Core. They all wore pins that identified themselves as such. They were acting like idiots, but if Jon was really honest with himself, it hadn't been THAT many years since he had gone out with soldier friends, and they were probably worse.

"So, anything new?" he asked, giving her time to make a decision.

@Xorism

 

[Guinevere Delevigne]

The night was still young, and they'd not only knocked back a few drinks, but had also completely carried the bar with their rendition of a classic. Popping down off the stage and joining Jon, Guin couldn't believe how long it had been since they had last had that much fun!

With a shocked expression on her face and holding a finger up in mute protest, she promptly broke into a giggle. "Hey! How did you know what I was going to say??" Clearly Jon knew her well enough by now, what naturally came to mind next. Guin was tempted to tell him that Kali had also told her to keep him away from work, as even on his holiday's Jon always found a way to get stuck in. Taking the song list from the table, she quickly glanced over and saw many good picks, although she had to admit there was a clear favourite.

"Hmm?" Her face stirred from the selection briefly. "Oh, well, just the usual, I suppose." While they both worked for the Empire in their own capacities, the secretive nature of the ISB made it prohibitively difficult to disclose work stories in a casual environment. "Let's see, I uh went on a date with a Nautolan. I've recently gotten a high score in Stetris and just landed VIP tickets to Slicercon! How about yourself?"

Her quiet expression grew with excitement towards the end of her sentence, before spotting the most definite choice for their next song once the stage was free. "How about this one?" She said with a wink, pointing to one of the greats.

@Raydo

 

[Jonathen Baize]

He sat back with a knowing smirk as he correctly predicted the woman's thoughts. He finished off his beer as she looked through the song selection.

Jon was glad Guin couldn't really talk about her work. It was a bad habit of his to always talk about work, but with her, it wasn't even much of an option. "Oh?" he said with a raised eyebrow. "Anything serious?" he asked.

"Perfect..." he said with a nod, clearly in agreement with her song selection.

It would still be a little bit before the stage was free, so he moved back to their conversation. "Well, things have been pretty crazy...I.." he was cut off by a bright flash and loud bang as he reflexively went to cover his eyes. Disoriented, he got down low but started to cough. His brain was still too muddled to quite keep up with what was happening.

As the knockout gas began to work, Jon felt his muscles relax as he fell to the floor, trying to cover his mouth.

@Xorism

 

[Guinevere Delevigne]

Guin hadn't thought too much of the Nautolan if she was being honest and her report of their date would match. While she had appreciated his kindness and apparent good heart, his obsessive work focus had made it quite difficult to match with her ever-increasing work needs. Something Jon would surely appreciate.

The sudden flash and bang caught the blonde by surprise as much as anybody, lacking the warning that usually accompanied such actions that Kalique or Rhia often provided. Try as she might to find Jon in the chaos, the flood of light obscured any hope of that and before long, she was out like a light.

--

Waking in a cold, damp and dark room was a terrifying experience for anyone, least of all Guin. Even with the training provided to her by the ISB, which would surely help, was not entirely enough to quench the painful feeling in her gut that something was horribly wrong.

Remembering the training, she ran through a list of checks used to establish your new situation.

Hands? Tied
Legs? Tied
Movement? Restricted
Vision? Obstructed
Speech? Obstructed
Hearing? Free

Damn, they were really in a bind now. Struggling against the rope didn't seem to get her anywhere useful, and thus she sat quietly using the main sensory she still had remaining, her hearing. Unbeknownst to her, Guin had been placed alone in the basement of a small safe house only a few kilometres from where they had been grabbed.

@Raydo

 

[Jonathen Baize]

Moments before the event.

"I can't believe that intel checked out." the leader said as he looked through one of the cameras they had hacked. They were in the small attic above the bar below, the music vibrating the floor. "Take the ISB agent, but grab the others too. Those diplomats may be useful as well." He said, giving the plan the go-ahead.

His crew executed their plan, dropping several flashbangs through the ceiling before gas grenade canisters followed. No one stood a chance. The team swept down and carried off their targets before anyone could raise an alarm.

"Call in the transport; we need to get off world immediately." that man said, clearly proud of the work they had done. This would be a great victory for the Rebellion if they could finish pulling this off.

***

Jon groaned as he righted himself in the large cage he and the other prisoners had been placed in. With bound hands, he felt the dry blood on his forehead. He thought he had hit on something as he fell. He looked around, not seeing Guin. There was a spike of fear that ran through him, but he suppressed that for the moment. The other prisoners were the Jr. Diplomats that had been sitting behind them. They looked unharmed, but all were clearly distraught.

Jon looked around to see if anyone was within earshot. "Hey!" he whispered to the woman closed to him. "Did you see where they took the woman that was with me?" he said, giving her a brief description. The woman looked at him with a blank stare, clearly in shock.

He looked around again; the fact they did get killed outright was a good sign. He hoped Guin had escaped or at least had just been separated. For the time being, he had no way of knowing.

"Think Jon. What's the plan?" he thought to himself, leaning his head back against the bars, the pain starting to set in.

 

[Guinevere Delevigne]

The sound of footsteps shuffling outside the door almost startled her as they briskly entered the room. Suddenly the Overseer was picked up, not that she could scream or protest as she was blindly carried into what must have been a makeshift interrogation room.

The blindfold was removed and a flood of light burst into her iris, causing Guin to try to hide her face and blink rapidly. Before her sat a woman, perhaps only a few years older than she was. She couldn't recognise anything immediately about this person, although the obscuring mask didn't help recognition efforts. But that was a positive sign, if they had intended to kill her then they'd not be so careful about hiding their identity.

The woman waved Guin to stop and listen, this wasn't so much as a negotiation as a hustling, and there would be little choice in the matter regardless.

"You might be wondering who I am and why you're here, well don't." She said harshly. The grit in her voice spoke of pain and heartache the likes of which Guin hadn't seen before. "Your friends are alive, for now, and if you would like to keep it that way, you will cooperate when we tell you what to do."

Absent being able to speak, Guin could only sit there, her mind began to worry about Jon. Slowly, as she took in the gravity of the situation, nodding in compliance. Whoever these people were, they somehow needed them group of imperials alive. Were they planning some kind of attack, or distraction? How much did they truly know about who they were dealing with? Time would tell.

@Raydo

 

[Jonathen Baize]

Jon waited for their captors to show themselves, but they never did. He saw the shadows of a couple of people outside as they passed by the door but hadn't seen or heard anything else.

The woman beside him was crying, face buried in her knees. "What's your name?" Jon asked quietly, nudging her to get her attention. The woman looked back up, her eyes focusing somewhat. "Huh?" she paused before adding "Leila." she said.

"Great, Leila. I am Commander Jonathen Baize" Jon spoke in a quiet but positive tone, hoping the military title would offer some comfort. He had seen shock many times on the battlefield; this seemed much the same. "And you all know each other?" he asked her, gesturing with his head toward the others.

"We are all assistants to Imperial Senators or Governors. We were here because of a conference. Are they going to kill us?" she asked, the word "kill" getting some of the other's attention. "If they wanted to kill us, they would have done so already. They want something else from us." he said, trying to reassure the group. It was a somewhat hollow gesture. They very well could still decide to kill them, but they were still here, and that was something..

****

One of the woman's fights outside the room would radio her, the comm clicking in Guin's Interigator's ear. "The transports are inbound, ETA 10 minutes." he said. She sat for a moment, looking at Guin, nothing but hatred and spite in her eyes. She despised the Imperial Overseer and everything she stood for.

@Xorism

 

[Guinevere Delevigne]

The struggle with interrogations, something that both of them knew from the various ones that they had been part of, was that they didn't always secure what you wanted. Both the rebels and the Imperials knew that each side would only say what they thought the other wanted. None were really expecting the other to actually honor their word, but this weird middle ground was found instead.

Guin would dutifully cooperate as long as she had to, until she or Jon could figure out a plan to either escape or overpower their captors. In her case that wouldn't come in the short term, but given her status it made her suspect that they perhaps needed her credentials more than anything. If she was dead, and anyone questioned their operation it could go south very quickly and thus for now at least, they needed her too.

--

Inside the holding cell, Jon would soon watch as each prisoner was picked up and transferred out the door individually. As one of the last to go, and with a little luck he'd walk right past the room that Guin was being held in under lock and key with only the small view port to notice.

Curiously, Jon would also notice several rebels wearing suits of imperial trooper armor, walking about in rather a hurry to get the prisoners on the transport. The uniform markings suggested a unit on Lianna, but no further information was apparent. At the very least he could be comforted in knowing that Guin was still alive, and where their next destination was but beyond that was a mystery to solve.

But they'd better hurry.

@Raydo

 

[Jonathen Baize]

"Hey! Where are you taking me? Get your hands off of me!" the young man who was dragged off first yelled. "Do you know who my father is!?" he continued before he was gagged and led out. Several of the others had similar outbursts as they, too, were taken. Leila was the 2nd to last person to go. "Its alright." he tried to reassure her before they, too, came and dragged her off.

Lastly, they came for Jon. He was silent as he was dragged out and led away. To his surprise, he found several stormtroopers moving through the building, or at least people posing as stormtroopers. The symbols on their shoulders showed them as part of the 5th regiment. He tried to remember where they were stationed, thinking it was Liana.

As they passed Guin's room, he spotted her through the small window. Without much thought, just reacting. He slapped the widow. "Hey!" he shouted as his escort tried to push him along. Jon threw an elbow back at the man's face, feeling his nose crunch as the blow connected. He spun on his guard but was hit by an electric shock as someone jabbed a stun baton into his back.

Every muscle in his body spasmed as he hit the floor hard. The guard he had attacked recovered and kicked Jon in the side hard as his consciousness faded and he was dragged off.

@Xorism

 

[Guinevere Delevigne]

The sudden banging of the door startled the two women sitting down in the adhoc interrogation room. Glacing over at the window in shock, Guin spotted a familiar face just long enough to determine that the culprit had indeed been Jon. The blondes' heart raced as the confirmation was all that she needed to know that her friend was safe and relatively unharmed after whatever the hell ordeal they were going through.

The moment flashed by as he disappeared again during some kind of commotion.

The lady in front of Guin stood up suddenly, walking a practised walk, but with small cracks in her confidence showing. After confirming that the situation was in hand, the lady looked back to Guin with a mocking smile. "A friend?" Suddenly, her vision faded as something connected with the back of her head.

--

The next thing Guin saw was a small, featureless room filled with numerous scared and panicked faces. The bindings and other fastenings had been removed, giving her a freedom once more. Well, as much freedom as the small box they were in granted anyone.

Standing up to test her legs, which by now were starting to feel more and more pained from the position she'd been lying in, the woman spotted him again. In a sort of wobbling frenzy, Guin raced over to find Jon on his side as she dropped beside him. Twisting his torso so that he'd be on his back, she grabbed his wrist and placed her face over his to check for both a pulse and breathing.

To her immense relief, she felt both, confirming that he'd only been knocked out and nothing worse. Pulling back, she shook him gently by the collar, hoping to rouse him. "Jon, are you with me? Jon, I need you buddy. Wake up please."

@Raydo