Gershwin’s head ached, as if each word Cody said was supposed to help her recall, but none of the memories were there. She tried to remember everything beyond the point of what was true and real: Cody did suffer… but what happened after that?

[right] ‘Yeah… There are bandages on my hands…’ [/right] 

She said them with resignation, defeated to her own fault. She saw a tiny but bright light stream out through a hole in her way and felt even worse. For someone with such beautiful gifts to be stuck here was a deprivation of what humans could be capable of, and a shame for the human race. For someone with, apparently, such volatile tendencies, would be a scary thing…

[right] ‘I’m going to help you get out of here. But when the time comes, I’m staying.’ [/right] 

She had been standing in the middle of her room, fit and normal, but hidden inside was an uncontrollable beast that should never be released. She fell on her knees and cried. 

[hr]

Now that Dr Baoning was out of the picture, the whole situation is complicated to different definitions of difficult. Agent Dioxide initially planned to persuade the doctor for an EMP pulse grenade which, had Baoning been the one to ask for, should not have been difficult and would have taken an hour at most to get. The status of Agent would have let him have the grenade… in three months before he could see it – and even then that needed the approval of the new Dr Jiang-Ping, and just doing that raised suspicion, requiring paperwork and justification. Now the only way he could reasonably see such a weapon in such a short time, was to steal one, unaccounted for, which was likely, since counting stock for Weapons Training did not happen until the end of the month, or, he could ask someone…? Agent Dioxide laughed at himself, allowing him the tension relief with such a crude, sad, joke that no one was anyone’s friend. Agent Caits was the most he’d talked to in the years he was here.

So he assessed his outcomes, and headed for Weapons and Defenses division, North of the UNARM compound. 

It wasn’t the tallest building, but it was the longest and widest, and its Northern face was the face of the crater wall itself, the thickest part of the entire formation. Thus, while it made WD look odd, but making it one of the most defended buildings in the world. It had to accommodate for large (tested) vehicles and high-area-impact weapons as well as shooting ranges. It regularly saw movement between WD and SRD with new experimental designs and personnel training. WD spawned the group known as [i]motivators[/i]. 

He entered the building and headed for the Shooting Ranges, noting the familiar gadgetry laying around, and some of the new technologies being used – they may be doing the work of evil, but their way of work was some of the most advanced in the world, which come to think of it, made the whole thing even more evil. 

The Shooting Ranges had a large office, with a small queue, as people had to approach the desk and request for the weapon(s) to test out. In this case, Agent Dioxide, after having queued behind several new motivators with their heavy machine guns, asked for five EMP pulse grenade, stating it for training purposes. With the people still lining up behind Agent Dioxide, the order went through. 

Because this was EMP, he had to go further back into the crater wall where there was no technology to be affected by it. Thankfully, the premises were empty, and he let loose. While there were no technology in the place of cameras, there were devices of large complexity, size, and distance, for which the grenades to test on, courtesy of WD. It was simple: there were lights and monitors around the machines to show that they were functioning. When hit with EMP, they go off.

He pressed on a button on his first grenade, and threw as far as he could. Contrary to movies, the grenade did not emit any sound whatsoever, but when the grenade had finally settled on its landing, none of the machines worked. Good. 

He started experimenting with throwing more than one grenade at a time, hurling the second and third grenade further back at the wall. He snuck one in his pocket, and threw the last one.

Now, the only problem was to sneak the weapon out. It was powerful, but considerably small so in his pocket there was no bulge. However, the doorway to and from the Shooting Ranges had a metal detector to make sure none of the weapons leave. Thankfully, Agent Dioxide thought of a plan beforehand – fortunately, the motivators were incredibly testy. 

He was near the queue to the office, when he whispered to himself, just loud enough for the brawny, thick-head-looking motivators:

‘Fuckin’ motivators.’

[right] ‘Hey, you, the fuck did you say?’ [/right]

Good, he got their attention. 

‘No, nothing, I said nothing.’

[right] ‘We heard what you said, asshole. You wanna fight, mate?’ [/right]

He snorted at the hard-to-hear British accent, which offended the group even more. Some even boasted their rented weapons as if they were actually going to use it on him. 

They instead proceeded to shoving and punching, and before long they were outside the Shooting Ranges, metal detectors blaring like mad. Several staff came and broke up the fight. The blaring was blamed on the motivators and their weapons, but not Agent Dioxide.

He secured their grenade.