Angel: One Million (Volume 1)

Rainfall

RAINFALL
ANGEL: ONE MILLION

...

| Mission Site Echo.
| 5:04 PM.
| The Flooded Remains Of An Exilier Energies Plant. Somewhere On Europa.

...

"Dreida, This isn't something you should be doing on your own. I can send Remnaya and Loki with you."

"That'd be putting unnecessary pressure on you, sir. You have enough work here as is; and besides, we both know I can take care of myself."

"I'm not doubting you, I just...I'm not gonna put one of my own in jeopardy for this mission."

"Just trust me, Riley. Please."

"...Huff. Okay. You have your orders, then. But come back to me in one piece."

"I promise."

...

Like a majority of the plans that Riley would come up with, it was a beginning-to middle-to-end progression line in which everything was supposed to fall into place by itself. Heck, this one in particular was being handled on a much tighter scale to befit that, evidence being that the whole thing was entrusted to just one person, and you couldn't get any less broad than something only you could get done. This group in particular, Nimbus Rehabilitation, was made up of a number of individuals who had survived the massacre of a village known as Nimbus Rose three years prior. Those who survived the destruction had banded together for a single, united purpose following it; salvation under the command of Riley Virtruso.

A small inner circle had been established early on full of people who were actually there when Nimbus was lost, but outside of that, it was either someone with a different story to tell, or folk looking for a job. Dreida Ontari was the latter of these options, and had been sent to investigate the recent appearance of an unassailed ground unit on Europa waving the flag of the Era Of Siliphys; a faction of pragmatic institutionalists who hid their faces behind masks, and were more of a cult than the "visionaries" they branded themselves to be over on Venus.

Dreida's insistence to go after them herself brought her to Exilier Energies, one of the many, many power plants that gave to the people under the constant rainfall of Europa through providing them with electricity. Their latest project, another power plant, was flooded in a terrible storm that left multiple staff injured and the place itself abandoned. The Dog Torjin was directed there by Nimbus's leader himself, but found nothing except for water that went up to her calves, and busted equipment that made this place look straight out of a horror movie. How was she gonna find a cult in a place that not even the wildlife wanted any part of?

She was gonna have to rely on her nose and dumb luck, and neither of them brought her any closer to what she was looking for. Sure, she was getting deeper in the facility and the factories water levels were getting more strained as she went further down, but that...shouldn't be happening, right? Not unless the water was being drained out of an outlet or being manually pumped from the interior to the outside. Now, nobody native to Europa would care enough to do something like this; floods and storms were such a regular occurrence that it could be remedied by just building another power plant—but it seemed that for Gladiolus, that wasn't good enough.

Who else would go out of their way to deploy themselves on-planet for an electric company, than the second strongest earth-grown faction behind the Winged Varsity? Not to mention that the Colonel of their armed forces was more than eager to swap steel with Dreida, for as soon as the Magistrate bounded down a flight of stairs and turned a corner to slide under a nearby gate, Alvira Haider took a single glance in the Doberman's direction and ordered six red dot sights to lock on to her figure. This prompted Dreida to stop where she slid and put her hands up like a deer in headlights, her eyes darting back and forth between the six riflemen with Alvira, Alvira herself, and the debris-ridden floor that made up their immediate vicinity.