forum || The Iron Guard | REBOOT | 3/3, CLOSED ||

Started August 04, 2020 by @PrettyLittlePyro

tune

Did you guys know we were fighting tonight?

Harvey wondered how he'd answer. Currently their phone was on the table, three feet away, but they were preoccupied trying to wrestle some tinfoil one of the crows, Bertie, had been trying to eat. So much for intelligence, but one had to be delicate in these matters. They wrestled the tinfoil out of her beak, giving her a pat on the head and answering.

admit, heard rumors, but hardly took seriously. nightwalkers so small group, didnt think to check. they answered, returning Bertie to her cage where she began to sulk. They gave her a bit of leftover healthy trailmix, for feathered friends and frazzled friends alike.

Might as well go find Seph. Her college was close by, and since they were very fast, they were sure to get there in no time.

Might as well use the comm unit they'd installed into their phone, those new devices were incredibly useful to call someone whilst running at high speeds. All you had to do was tap and give a voice command with their Caller ID, and they'd be there for you.

"Arc, call Idiot Number One for me please." it was an affectionate nickname, but they'd still never tell their friends what they secretly called them. They chose wisely, slipped their phone into their pocket, just in case, and stepped into a slightly more comfortable pair of athletic coveralls made for movement at high speeds (far from tight, though, they were just very durable) and their favorite jacket, a pleasantly weighted thing that always made them feel safer and more secure. They had multiple, two for when they were The Soul in case one teared somehow, but they didn't really get that close to people to let that happen anyways.

They ran across the rooftops, a tad dramatic but relatively painless, and landed on the college rooftops where a bunch of rebels in trenchcoats had decided to skip classes; they could only pity them as a they were a homeschooler.

When Seph learned that neither of the other two dorks had signed them up to fight tonight, she sighed. Of course, the Guard had been getting popular enough to have fights chosen for them, but it was still annoying.

Her phone rang. She glanced at the Caller ID and sighed. It was Harvey, probably coming to talk to her or something like that. Whatever the case, she’d welcome any excuse to leave the discussion. She glanced around, saw that no one was paying her any attention, and shoved her stuff in her bag, before picking it up, slinging it over her shoulder, and walking out the door.

The hallways were relatively empty, and the classroom doors were all closed, so she answered the phone. “Hey, what’s up?” She asked.

"The sky. Where are you now? We should prepare for the battle in a minute." they said, "Well. If there is one."

They jumped down from the crumbling structure and sprinted towards the entrance. They could easily pass as a student, they had the eye bags for it.

"I'm coming in, I promise I won't embarrass you but we should get out of here before you know who shows up, looking for trouble." they glanced around, making sure nobody was listening. And nobody was.

"You know, you really need to find a new answer for that greeting," Seph commented, opening the door to outside and looking around, but not seeing them. "I'm outside the main building. Why do you ask?" She gave a little huff. "You're on the roof again, aren't you?"

She sighed and rubbed her face. "I know. I did my best to leave as soon as I could. Do we want to pick Bra- I mean, Doug, up, before we go to start training?" She closed her eyes and tipped her head up towards the sky, thinking. "We'll have to do some research about the Nightwalkers' weakness, but that shouldn't be too difficult."

"I am no longer on the roof! I am heading towards the main hall, which definitely counts for something!" Harvey said, a little hurt. The roof was a good place to be, it allowed you to scout out better. And Harvey was the one with the ultimate database, they should be thanking them! They'd set up the ultimate surveillance system that nobody in the city knew about, their birds! Tiny cameras attached to birds. Good for watching out, and the rest Harvey could hack from almost any database there was in seconds.

"Do you even want my help? I'm wounded, truly I am." they moaned dramatically, spotting Seph and walking over to her.

"I'm sure you are," Seph said, turning to look in the direction of the voice. "You get wounded very easily, don't you, birdy?" She said it in a laughing tone, so he would know that she was teasing him. She would never go too far with her teasing… although she wasn't the best judge of that sometimes.

"Do we want to pick up Doug first, or let him come to the base?" She asked them, starting to walk toward her car.

"Pick him up, we'll want to talk along the way." they said. Harvey didn't mind the teasing, they… well, it was kind of nice, really, and Seph was witty and funny and a good friend, so they didn't care much about what she said as long as she didn't go too far.

"How were classes? Boring as usual?" they asked, hopping into shotgun seat and buckling the seatbelt.

"Absolutely. Seriously, I don't know why anyone would want to know the history of ancient Tanzania. It's not like we'll ever use these lessons in our real life, unless somehow we get a major with something to do wit history." Seph rolled her eyes. "Unfortunately, the class is required, and so I get to listen to boring lectures twice a week." She grinned. "At least this time, they got distracted and I could leave without being seen."

She brushed a strand of her red hair behind her ear and sighed, starting the car. She sent Doug a quick text, asking where he was.

Harvey hummed a little, leaning against the window. "I could always tutor you instead, you know. I can legally teach. Or at least, my hacking skills say I can legally teach." they smiled. "I've been tutoring some kids by the bay. You know, in the slums? Certification isn't really necessary but it helps the authorities question less. I swear, the place is crawling with them, I think the area is really overly concerned with so called justice." not like it was justice, just the powerful picking on the weak. Even the more powerful members of the slums couldn't stand up to a stun beam to the chest.

Doug glanced at his phone as he walked down the sidewalk back towards his place.
I'm about halfway between the shooting range and my place, why? he sent the reply and continued down the road. Not far in front of him there was a group of people all gathered around looking at something. He shifted the weight on his shoulder and started making his way through them.

"Did you hear that the Iron Guard is going to be fighting tonight?" Someone said near him. It took a moment for him to realize that they were, in fact, talking to him.

"Oh, my apologies ma'am, what?" he stopped to give the woman his attention.

"The Iron Guard is fighting tonight, did you hear about it?" the woman repeated.

"Yeah. Yeah I did," Doug suppressed a grimace. He wasn't super thrilled about fighting tonight.

"What do you have against the Iron Guard?" the woman raised her voice, sounding angry now. Her tone was drawing the attention of everyone else.

And you did it again… brilliant Doug, brilliant.
"Ma'am I have nothing against the Iron Guard," Doug replied calmly. "Hard day, that's all." he turned to leave before things could escalate anymore. He sighed and kept walking.

Do you want us to pick you up? Seph asked Doug. She pulled out of the school parking lot, turning the corner and almost running into a guy who had decided to speed at the last second.

She cursed at the driver, then turned to Harvey, or, at least, looked at him out of the corner of her eye, gaze flicking back to the road and then to them. “You could teach me hacking,” she suggested. “Then I could pretend that I graduated from classes with higher marks than I really have.” She grinned.

And then sighed. “Yeah. People think we’re so powerful and wonderful. Honestly, they need a better justice system, or at least give a support system to the weak. But nooo. They need to invest their money on street fighting instead.”

If it's for training, I just spent two hours making two very lovely holes in a paper target at the range, so I'll probably pass. However if you guys need some help with something sure. Doug replied. Just meet me at my place if you need me.

He figured that they were probably both coming from Seph's college which was about a ten minute drive from his place. That would give him at least five minutes to get cleaned up and ready to go again.

His mind shifted to the reason he'd gone to the range in the first place. He was going to lose his mind if he didn't do something. Every time things got quiet he couldn't help but worry for her. Echo 6 was her code name. She was currently serving across the world. Usually she would check in every two weeks, but it had been almost four and he'd heard nothing from her.

While already being a bit high strung normally, now he was a bit extra. And anything could trigger him. Meaning that training with the others was going to be a bit difficult.