[Plot] Hello, We Must Be Going

[Chisaki Watanabe]

In the back, Chisaki watched at the tracker Vic did manage to stick began to move away from them on the screen of the laptop. She was nervous. She was never a good gauge of distance... a few blocks should do it right? Is that how long a kilometer is?

Her emotional responses were a lot easier to read when she was 'in disguise' (un-goth), and as such Chase could literally see the anxiety on her face as she was trying to figure it out.

[Chase Delacroix]

"Relax a little, I've got this."

When he thought that there was sufficient distance Chase started moving with the headlights off.

[Narrator]

Victor's plan of waiting until a stop would have been a good one, if the van had actually stopped anywhere near where they'd originated from. Instead, it took a turn out into the country where it was going to be much harder for him to drop off and find their friends later. And the van was picking up speed as it continued on it's route to... where-ever.

Thankfully it hadn't gotten on any motorways yet...

[Victor Freud]

"When the plan goes awry, adapt." He had intended to adhere the tracker to the frame with multiple zip ties - screws were too noisy and time consuming, and while a strong magnet was fast it also wasn't infallible, as it could be jarred loose on rough roads like these; especially if the frame was rusty. So he'd had to compromise; he was the mounting bracket. If all else failed he had his phone on him still, but with how rough the roads were he didn't dare take it out of his pocket.

"The fact that both signals are still together will tip them off." He said confidently, as if to reassure Robin. "I've got no reason to stick two on one van, and two vans wouldn't travel so close all the time, so they'll realize I'm still carrying them. They know that even if I was left behind back there I could get myself back home."

[Chisaki Watanabe]

"They never got the second tracker on the other van!" Chisaki explains to Chase, figuring this out as soon as the two vans were far enough apart.

"Do you think that is going to be an issue?!" She called out from the back.

[Chase Delacroix]

"That either means he got caught, which isn't likely because taking him in the van doesn't quite make sense, or he ran out of time, made a judgment call, and hitched a ride."

[Narrator]

This was going to prove to be a little bit of a drive in the countryside that this van took. The further they got out, the more assured Chase began to feel that they were definitely on the right track. Why else would they be taking a patient along such back roads if they weren't looking to disappear them?

Unfortunately for Victor, he was going to be feeling this ride tomorrow...

The Driver took them over pavement first, and really the only thing that would prove wearing on him was the weight of himself against a ziptie.

However, once he'd gotten comfortable with that, the road turned to gravel as they turned off the paved road once they were deep into the country, and tiny little rocks which would seem incredibly sizable to a teeny man would start hopping up off the road at him and pinging of the sides of the vehicle's undercarriage, escaping the weight of the vehicle rolling over them.

[Robin Stanton]

Robin's not as perceptive as she could be in her current state, but even she notices the occasional pang of Vic getting hit by tiny rocks and the different noise the van makes on the gravel road. Moving while shrunk down like this is... odd. Kind of sluggish, like she's denser or partially frozen, which makes it take a while to crawl out of the tracking device as pink clay that spills from Vic's pocket. She snakes her way up along his leg and to the undercarriage of the car and hooks herself in. Only then does she relax on the metaphorical muscle keeping her condensed (on her side of things anyway) and her volume returns to roughly Vic's equivalent, except in the form of a thick fabric that unfurls underneath Vic. For a couple moment the other hand flaps loosely with the movement of the car until she manages to grab a hold of the undercarriage with the other end of the hammock and pulls herself taut to give Vic some rest from hanging from the ziptie and getting pelted.

[Victor Freud]

At his smaller scale, Victor was more durable than normal. But it was still rocks the size of CRT monitors striking him over his body, even if it wasn't lethal it was still unpleasant. He tried turning himself so that his back was facing the ground, but that put a lot more strain on his back from the single twist tie, especially with the uneasy terrain jostling him around. Without Robin's help he would have wound up in a real sorry state, even if it was just surface damage.

"Thanks. Looks like I owe you one." He was trying to sound cool and collected, but the relief in his voice that came with the respite was clearly evident.

[Robin Stanton]

"S'what teammates do! I mean I wouldn't leave you hanging." the hammock chuckles, which adds a weird wobble to the already existing vibration of the van.

[Narrator]

Eventually, the gravel gave way to wild flowers and grass. Tall blades and seedheads bouncing lightly off Robin's surface as the two held firm to the undercarriage of the vehicle. After just thirty or so seconds of this, the can came to a full stop.

It was harder to hear what was going on with the captive patient when the van was moving, but as soon as it had, they could hear him shuffling around in the back, screaming all sorts of obscenities at the driver, lashing about, and generally being problematic, as one probably would be when they were being drug off into the night.

The driver got out of the car, and greeted someone not the patient.

"Rabbit... This one's squirrely." He called out.

[Robin Stanton]

"A plus patient care there." Robinammock whispers. "Should we try to follow them in or wait for the cavalry?"

[Victor Freud]

Victor was thankful for the change in terrain, even if Robin had done a good job of sheltering him. He listened closely to the words spoken, and considered the options Robin put forth to him.

"Do you think you could slip this inside the van?" He asked as he pulled the second transmitter out of it's pouch, the device popping back to it's original size, bigger than a football at his scale. "It's unlikely they're going to go anywhere else interesting tonight... and I'd like to get a look at what we're dealing with here. Even from a distance." He gently put a hand on her... well, surface - she didn't have a shoulder at the moment. "Remember, if you let go of me, it's on you to keep yourself fun-sized. My schtick only works on what I'm touching."

[Robin Stanton]

"You got it!" she whispers and let's herself go slack and fall away from Vic a bit, growing in size as she does so. At the same time as the feeling of getting pressed in on all sides falls away she reduces herself in her own way which feels more like letting excess mass fall away from her. Just not literally. And soon enough she has once again wormed her way into the tracker. It goes a little faster this time, she already knows it's layout now and how to fit her body in alongside and throughout the material of the device. And with a little bit of straining she wriggles some of the tracker's casing free to split into little legs with which to scurry up into the undercarriage of the car and towards the front where she disappears up into the motorblock.

A couple moments later Robin, now bit over a foot tall drops down again sans tracker and gives Vic a thumbs up.

[Narrator]

while the pair worked, the voices continued to talk.

"He'll be pleased as Punch when you get the van doors open. C'mon." A female voice replies, and a pair of slender legs in what seem like leggings come to meet the masculine, slacked pair, then the two start to return to the back door of the vehicle.

While they were talking, whoever was in the back of the van went silent, though the weight of them hadn't shifted any to give off the impression they had left the vehicle.

[Chase Delacroix]

Meanwhile, in the other van idling out of sight...

"I can't see a thing. Shall I put my ninja skills to use?"

[Chisaki Watanabe]

From Chase's angle (not hidden under a van) Chase really didn't see anything. Nothing but a big empty field, covered in tall grass and wild flowers.

"Getting out of the van might be fine... but getting any closer might serve to alert others."

[Chase Delacroix]

"Right. At times like this, I'm jealous of those of us with night vision."

[Victor Freud]

While Robin was slinking along the underside of the van, Victor set to work on silently freeing himself from his confines. The folding knife in his pocket may have been shrunk down, but it still made short work of the (now) thick plastic of the ziptie, so that by the time Robin was giving him the thumbs up he was carefully dropping himself onto his feet, careful not to make too much noise. He gave her a thumbs up in return before slinking closer to one of the rear wheels, hiding behind it as he listened.

[Narrator]

"He'll be pleased as Punch when you get the van doors open. C'mon."

True to her statement, when the dual pairs of legs came to collect their 'patient', the person inside the back of the truck greeted them with a cheerful "Hullo!"

"Hello friend. You'll be coming with me, alright?"

"Alright!" The patient chirped back.

"Out you get, blighter. You're Bunny's problem now." The gruff voice proclaimed, and as he did, the patient hopped out of the back of the van. The driver stood aside, as the patient seemed to walk away from the van casually with this 'Bunny'.

[Victor Freud]

It looked like pretty soon the pair were going to lose their cover, so Victor peeked out from around the tire to try and get a glimpse of their surroundings in the hopes of finding some little nook for them to hide in.

[Narrator]

Strangely, no one had noticed them. Yet.

When Vic (or Robin) went to sneak a peek at their surroundings, they found themselves in a perfect patch of English countryside filled with tall grass and fun little wild flowers.

And that's it. There wasn't a complex to be seen. No building to infiltrate that the eye could behold. Just a great place for a picnic. Maybe they should come back here sometime for a date friendly outing.

[Robin Stanton]

"What do you think? Underground facility? Cloaked building? Helicopter pick-up?" Robin whispers as they huddle behind the tire of the van.

[Victor Freud]

Victor squinted, looking for some sort of building in the distance or something, but there wasn't anything to be see. That didn't make sense, why would the park the van so far away from wherever they were taking this patient? Unless....

"I think we may have made a very, very big mistake." He whispered back.

[Narrator]

Vic was right, something was very much amiss here.

The patient moved towards 'Bunny' pleasantly, but did think to ask. "Where are we going?"

"Home." The albinic female replied to him, as a door of light opened up behind her. What was beyond the door looked sterile, cold, clinical.... and interior.

This place on the other side of the door had to be where they were taking the 'unwanted' mutants.

[Robin Stanton]

"Go time!" Robin whispers and doesn't bother to wait for a response from Vic. Doorways that suddenly appear have a tendency to close just as suddenly in her experience. She drops to all fours and turns into a striped cat, green again, though this time intentionally to blend in with the grass. She grabs Vic by the back of his collar and turns her head to chuck him onto her back before breaking into a hurried sprint, close to the ground as she can manage to try and stay below the grass' height.

[Victor Freud]

Victor was just about to ask Robin if she could cough up the other tracker when she beat him to the punch. There wasn't any time for him to protest, there was barely time for him to understand what was happening, he was too busy being tossed into the air and then having to cling to green fur to keep from being thrown off the green feline's back.

[Narrator]

With the pair going through the portal distracted by their destination and the van driver off on his own mission to return said vehicle, Robin was capable of sneaking up to the portal before closure.

[Robin Stanton]

She leaps through the portal without putting much thought into the afterwards, the green cat with it's rider suddenly standing out a lot more against the empty, sterile interior.

[Chase Delacroix]

Seeing the second tracker move and then jump away entirely, Chase cursed and scrambled to relocate the signal, "Shit! That light was a portal, and at least one of our people just went in!"

[Chisaki Watanabe]

".... Voluntarily?" Chisaki asked, sounding a bit confused.

[Chase Delacroix]

"I only ever made out two people walking into the light, so unless they were in someone's pocket they must have snuck in. At least I hope so."

[Narrator]

On the other side of the light...

The green cat bearing a tiny man stood out like a sore thumb against the poured cement floor coated in white epoxy that it currently stood on. Which made the patient immediately notice it. "Do you have a kitty?" He asked, looking at Robin.

Tensing up, the female turned around and noticed the cat, and immediately called out " Tweeds!"

Her cry summoned a pair of goons, twins by the look of it. Beefy but not too bright looking, they immediately bulked into action to catch the 'cat', scrambling together to collect it.

[Robin Stanton]

"Mu-row!" the cat says and sprints down the hall. A regular housecat is faster than any human but unlike her father, Robin's assuming of forms isn't quite as perfect. She does puff up her fur to hide her passenger, looking for an open door or a corner or someplace she can take Vic to hide. And if she finds somewhere to disappear herself, even better.

[Victor Freud]

Victor couldn't blame Robin for taking the opportunity that she had; if time had allowed for it he would have made the same decision but probably just gone by himself. Which would have been a bad idea in and of itself; at least together they could look out for each other. So for now all he could do was cling to her fur and wait for an opportunity to lose their pursuers. He just hoped that they wouldn't have to split up to do so.

[Narrator]

The place was rather lacking in features, just a big empty hallway. More orderlies that looked exactly the same came stomping down the hallway towards 'kitty' looking to cut her off at the pass.

But a side room to her left provided itself just in time for her to dash into.

It seemed to be an examination room of some kind. She didn't have long before the Tweedles would arrive to grab her, but there were plenty of places to hide a tiny man in here.

[Robin Stanton]

Robin comes to a skidding stop in the room. With just a bit more time she'd figure out some kind of misleading hint like a loose ceiling tile or something but as is she'll just have to go all in on camouflage. Vic surely knows how to hide himself away, or so she hopes anyway. Running into one of the corners she turns into one of those exam-room skeletons and hopes the goons know even less anatomy than her because while she knows the general idea of what bones should exist in a human body, it's bound to be full of discrepancies like number of ribs or vertebrae or all those tiny little hand and foot bones she ends up guesstimating.

[Victor Freud]

The examination table had been the nearest thing for Victor to hide under, and he wasted no time in diving under the thing and pressing his tiny body tight to one of the legs. He was depending on the darkness of his suit plus the fact that the guards were looking for a green cat to assist him in being overlooked.

[Narrator]

It worked! At least in the immediate. The quad of brothers(?) came into the room and began flipping items like the thoughtless thugs they seemed to be, smashing things around them searching for the kitty. The exam table Victor hide behind was thankfully bolted down so they really couldn't flip that.

"Stop it you imbeciles!" Bunny barked as she came into the room, scanning the place with her eyes for several tense moments. She paused with her back turned to the skeleton, seemingly thinking.

Unfortunately Bunny had taken basic biology in secondary and knew that 12 was the appropriate number of ribs. Her response to this revelation was to sidekick the faux-medical model straight in the solar plexus, in hopes that it would knock off what she now knew to be a shapeshifter off their game.

[Robin Stanton]

Robin might not have lungs to have the air knocked out of, but she is taken by surprise by Bunny turning her back to her before attacking. She clatters to the ground with the always funny noise of a collapsing skeleton and reassembles into a cat that tries to bolt past everyone's legs and make a break for the door.