Cinder

14 - Splintered Mind

She stood stoically, staring down at him as he tried to get his thoughts in order.

Kay is Artemis? Or- is this even Kay?

Two things were certain, in spite of this newfound revelation; he didn't have time to spend worrying about what Kay- Artemis- meant, and he still needed to get both her and the Cinder off the ship.

She continued to wait for a response of some kind, only to react at the sound of a sidearm being cocked. Her gaze snapped onto a prone Gates who, weakly clutching her abdomen, leveled a Hammond at her and fired.

Artemis dodged with instantaneous reflexes, rolling to the side and out of sight behind several packing crates. Now aware of the situation, the four Titans and several riflemen around the room came to take over the situation.

Tobias wanted to help them, but the mission was more important right now. Pushing himself off the floor, he ran over to Gates just as Davis reached her as well.

"Get her into the Leatherback," he ordered, reaching underneath her arms and locking his hands across her chest. Davis grabbed her legs and lifted up, allowing them to carry her over to the dropship.

"I'm fine," she tried to argue, but neither of them allowed room for discussion. Laying her on the floor of the ramp as Gray sat in the pilot's seat and began to start the takeoff procedure, he reached into a pouch in his belt and pulled out the Cinder.

"Take it!" he hurriedly motioned to Davis, holding it out for the latter to take it. Davis stared at him.

"What about you?"

"I'm staying," he yelled over the sounds of gunfire in the hangar, "I've still got to get Kay- Artemis- whatever the hell she is off the ship. Just transmit the rendezvous coordinates to me, I'll find my way there!" Before Davis could protest, Tobias turned and ran out of the ship and back towards the sound of battle.

Behind him, he heard the Leatherback take off, and exit through the shield doors. That was one problem taken care of; onto the next one.

The bodies of the riflemen lay broken and battered upon the ground, evidently having been dispatched by the highly advanced Simulacrum. Looking past them, he saw her leaping in the air and utilizing the hangar's environment with ease. Climbing aboard the top of a dropship, she used it as a vantage point to unload an SMR she'd pillaged off a corpse into the first Vanguard before having to evade a swipe of HBE's fist that crushed the hull of the ship where she'd been standing.

Landing lithely next to Tobias, she shifted her attention to him as he jumped and propelled himself towards her to try and tackle her. Holding her palm out, she stopped his momentum in an instant and proceeded to slam him into the ground to further stun him.

"I am not your enemy!" she shouted angrily, frustrated at his continuous attempts to fight her.

"Funny, because you're sure acting like it," he coughed out, still recovering from the impact.

She was about to respond, but was forced to duck as HBE tried to grab her. Unexpectedly, she turned and faced the Ion head on, simply glaring at the Titan as it stopped and returned her unusual stare.

To the left, the Legion took aim at her, powering up its predator cannon for a power-shot and letting the chaingun spin up.

He barely had time to wonder what she was trying to do before the Legion fired and he waited for the sound of shrapnel from her body hitting the back wall of the hangar. After a moment, however, he was quite nonplussed to see that she was still standing and very much intact; the hand of HBE was stretched out in front of her casting a vortex shield, all of the bullets caught in its grasp.