It was time to depart.
Adrienne sighed, half relieved that they would be leaving, and half worried about what lay on the other side of the Gate. Not only did she continue to be apprehensive about cities, but now they were heading into a city occupied by enemy forces. Of course, this was by no means the first time she would be riding off to battle, but it was the first time said battle was any more than a small territorial skirmish. And -- she had to admit, even if only to herself -- she was nervous about heading off to the front. Yes, she knew that she was not strictly going to be directly involved in major battles, but nevertheless, she would undoubtedly be involved in direct combat with someone, quite possibly in the upcoming week. And, despite all her mental preparations beforehand, the fact that the hour was now here -- not tomorrow, not next week, not even this evening, but now -- hit her like a brick. Adrienne realised that she was frightened.
She refused to let the others see her fear. She hid behind a stony mask of silent indifference.
Lee approached a bookshelf and pulled a book from it. Adrienne stared in confusion for a few seconds, wondering what he was doing. Then, she heard a metallic clanking, as though a machine were working behind the bookshelf. Slowly, the bookshelf split, and Adrienne raised her eyebrows at it as the two halves receded, revealing a tunnel. It seemed to her a very strange mechanism -- one that, but for the mechanical sound indicating a machine, she would have attributed to magic. Briefly, she wondered how much more the mundanes were capable of that she was unaware of. "Please follow me," Fleming instructed them, glancing back at the group before proceeding into the tunnel.
Her butterfly bat its wings a few times and fluttered up from Adrienne's hand, returning to sit motionlessly on her shoulder as she leaned down to retrieve her faded carpet bag and long, thin bundle wrapped in off-white cloth. One held firmly in each hand, she walked purposefully towards the entrance to the tunnel.
As they walked through the passageway, the witch glanced around. She tried not to let her discomfort show, but likely failed; something about the enclosed concrete and metal area, illuminated starkly by a row of electrical lightbulbs simply felt wrong. She suppressed a shudder.
Soon, they found themselves before a large pair of metal doors. Fleming pressed a button and announced himself; the doors opened, revealing two large soldier men, whom Fleming promptly told to stand down. As she passed the guards, Adrienne stayed on alert, feeling intensely uncomfortable with being, aside from her hands and tongue, unarmed while so close to two armed soldiers. If they had wanted to, they could have killed the witch in a heartbeat, and there would not have been anything she could do to stop it. A bullet was, after all, faster than her speech.
"This is our staging/mission preparation area," announced Fleming. "As you may have guessed, most of our personnel prefers the upper levels in terms of cozyness." Indeed, the witch thought drily. The grey walls of the hallways, the electrical light, and the artificial-smelling air continued to make her uncomfortable. Abruptly, she realised why she felt this way: Everything about this environment was utterly unnatural. In Fleming's office, there had at least been wood, the light had been less harsh, and the air had smelled natural (if not strictly of nature). Here, there was only concrete and metal, and the light and air truly seemed manmade. An image of great, empty blue skies danced through Adrienne's mind, and she felt long dry grass tickling her naked legs as her bare feet dug into the cold, damp earth. A breeze danced over her skin and moved her dark hair out of her face, as a ladybug landed on her foot and began crawling its way up her ankle. The sun warmed her skin.
The sight of a great machine awoke her from her reverie. It was covered with switches, lights, buttons, and various other electronic apparatus. When Elektra asked what it was, a young man in a white coat appeared, stating that it was a computer named Colossus. The witch cocked her head, wondering whether the English word "computer" had a vastly different meaning than its French cognate. As the conversation proceeded, she came to understand that this was not a normal machine, but a completely new kind of mundane technology -- something that was artificial, but able to fulfil the same role as a human computer completely on its own. A machine that can analyse data. A machine that can... think. This revelation unsettled Adrienne; she turned away, wanting desperately to move on. Internally, she repeated her earlier question about what exactly the mundanes were capable of. She was unsure she wanted to know the full answer. It was a relief when they were finally able to leave that machine behind.
When they finally arrived at their destination -- apparently it was the "armoury", though Adrienne wasn't sure of what exactly that meant (Armoire ? Why would we need to visit a wardrobe?) -- Lee handed each of them a red dossier, as Fleming explained that these were their "Agent Cards", which had on them combination codes for lockers containing their own weapons. Adrienne tucked her bundle under the arm carrying her carpet bag to take her card.
Suddenly, a white-haired, red-eyed woman appeared. Fleming seemed off-put by her arrival -- apparently he had not been expecting her -- but after a period of silence followed by his looking over her documents, said, "I see. Welcome, Miss Polikarpova, and let me apologize for forgetting about your presence. I'd guess you used a different access?" The woman nodded. Adrienne was not quite sure what to make of this woman.
When the group was granted access and Adrienne entered, her eyes went wide. Never before had she seen so many weapons, and such a variety at that. Quietly, she walked past the racks of knives, and firearms, and explosives, and various other weapons she failed to categorise at all. After glancing over her Agent Card, she found her locker and, placing her carpet bag and bundle on the floor at her feet, opened it. The witch smiled.
Inside the locker was what seemed to be a simple SMLE Mk III rifle. However, Adrienne knew that it was much more than just a rifle. It was her rifle -- ageing, but reliable and familiar. And, more importantly, it was enchanted.
Not long after Adrienne had been taught to use a broom, she had had a rifle thrust into her hands. Despite the girl's apparent lack of magical talent, her mother -- a witch named Toinette, whose skill with charms had earned her much renown in francophone Canada's occult world -- was determined to make her good at something. Hence, not only did she excel at flight, but she became one of the best shooters among the Coven's younger population. Soon enough, she was able to combine these two skills, and began shooting targets while in flight. Hours upon hours of practice allowed her to hone this ability, until she was able to hit a target from hundreds of feet away while flying faster than many of her peers' top speeds.
When she had decided to join the military, her mother had come to see her. The two women had always had a difficult relationship, but Adrienne was heading off to war, and Toinette did care for her daughter's life, at least. She wanted to help, even if only from across the ocean. Hence, she had charmed Adrienne's rifle, giving it what amounted to three modes, each activated through a specific incantation. The first, which Adrienne had nicknamed the "mode plombique", caused the bullet fired to lodge itself in the target and gain weight dramatically, in order to slow the target down and restrict their movement, while causing very little damage. The second, which she had nicknamed the "mode étourdante", caused the bullet fired to blind and deafen the target for several seconds upon impact, while causing less damage than would be done normally but causing a similar amount of pain. The third, which she had nicknamed the "mode normale", had no special abilities and rendered the rifle mundane until she chose to activate one of the other modes. Of course, the first two required a small supply of prana to each bullet as long as its charm was in effect; when that supply was denied, the bullets were rendered completely ordinary.
Adrienne picked up the rifle, feeling its weight in her hand. It was not overly heavy, but nevertheless had a heft to it; capable of being easily used in flight or on the ground. She slowly stroked the wooden barrel, then traced her finger around the ring of metal that was the muzzle. Abruptly, she lifted it to her shoulder, peering down the sight, her finger dancing over the trigger. It felt just right like that. She squinted. "Feu d'métal," she whispered, and she could feel her mother's magic -- it had a distinctive feel to it, one that she easily recognised from having handled hundreds of Toinette's charmed objects throughout her life -- reach out to her from the wood and metal, "'est lourde cette balle." The magic imbued into the rifle shot through its surface into her hands, connecting with her own prana. She felt the inside of the weapon with her mind, noticed the way the air inside had almost become more heavy. "J't'abats, j't'abasourdis," she whispered, and she felt a change in the rifle. "J'te tourne, j't'étourdis." For a split second, her prana was pushed back to the surface, then it snapped back, reconnecting with the rifle's latent charm. This time, it felt different, though it was still definitely Toinette's work. The air inside the barrel was not heavy, but rather light, and as she focused on it, Adrienne felt herself becoming somewhat lightheaded. She stopped feeling around the rifle with her prana, leaving it there as she returned her focus to her five mundane senses. "J'tire sans pouvoir," she whispered finally, "charme, au revoir." And, at that, she suddenly felt the connection cut off, and the rifle was once again a normal gun. She probed it for a second with her prana, but there was nothing except, perhaps, a hint of the latent charm hidden inside; any witch or magus who did not know what exactly to look for would be unable to detect it.
Adrienne placed the rifle down, kneeling beside her carpet bag. It was not a particularly large or small bag, but its size on the inside had been enhanced somewhat: it could hold a small amount more than what its outer dimensions would suggest, so that it could store a fallow-coloured cotton dress, a tan cotton nightgown, a chestnut brown overcoat, her hat, undergarments, and a good-sized bottle of scotch (which she was not sure she was allowed to have, but it would seem that if she was not, no one had noticed its presence), without making it seem full at all on the outside. Noticing that several others had changed their clothes, the witch removed the overcoat, standing to put it on, and buttoned it up; if she remembered correctly, Poland was a fairly cold place. Then, after stashing her Agent Card within and determining that she did not need anything else from within the carpet bag, and that she could not conceivably fit either her rifle or her bundle inside, she closed it.
Next, she stood up, tucking her bundle and rifle under her arm and picking up her carpet bag, and closed the locker door. She wandered over to where a number of knives were on display. After looking them over for a minute, she picked one up: it was a Bowie knife. She examined it for a few seconds before deciding that it would do, and put it inside her carpet bag. Adrienne went on to find ammunition for her rifle, which also went in her carpet bag, and located a sling that she used to hang her rifle on her shoulder, under the overcoat.
Having completed her preparations, she glanced around the room. Notably, Markus had shifted into his half-beast form; the witch wrinkled her nose in disapproval. She looked away to see what the rest of the team was doing; some had also finished their preparations, while others were still looking over the weapons. She looked over at Clark, wondering whether she should apologise for embarrassing him.
