Chapter Text
Xilonen scrambles up the outside of the conning tower, jamming a combat knife into crevices at several points to create her own handholds. She's pretty sure this was not in the parameters of the wargames that were supposed to be happening.
She's pretty sure this is an actual war situation.
She's extremely sure she has no interest in letting any of the men boarding a battleship get close enough to touch her.
"Papa to Doc, where are you?" Donny's voice in her ear on the radio.
She pauses just long enough to flick it to two way mode. "Halfway up the conning tower. It was the only direction I could see to get away."
"Away is good. I'm on shore and I'm not finding a way to get back to you." He sounds upset about that.
Xilonen goes hand over hand along the struts where the tower extends horizontally. The bridge is just above her. "I think I'm coming to you," she says. "I've got a plan."
The officers have retreated to the armoured tower. There's no-one on the bridge when Xilonen climbs in through the open window.
There's also no way for her to get in there now, she's pretty sure, even if she trusted these guys which she doesn't.
But there is stuff here she can rip apart and break to get what she needs before she climbs out and up again.
"Doctor X, this is Boreas." Varka's voice. Xilonen sighs and switches her broadcast channel.
"Kind of dealing with a situation here, dude."
"I know. Are you with anyone?"
"Nope." She's not looking down. She's never climbed this high before. She doesn't even have a safety rope.
"Shit," he says. She's never heard him swear before. "The ship's under attack."
"I'm extremely aware."
"You sound out of breath. Are you running?"
"Climbing." She pulls herself onto one of the flat bits. She's pretty sure this will be high enough. "I'm going to meet up with Papa," she tells Varka. "And then I'll be with someone."
"Isn't the Adventure Team on sh- you've spotted her where?"
Xilonen grins despite herself. She's tying fabric over metal struts that used to be part of the bridge fixtures.
"There's not a lot of people I trust on a Navy ship, dude," she says. "I'm going to meet my best bro and we'll figure something out. Doctor X out." She flicks broadcast back to Donny's channel. "I think I'm going to land somewhere around that little town to the north of the LZ," she says. "Meet you there?"
"On that heading, Doctor X."
Xilonen lifts the glider she just made to her shoulders. She's pretty confident in this.
And then she takes a running leap into the sky.
~
{Varka}
He doesn't scream as he watches, through binoculars, a sixteen-year-old girl hang glide from the conning tower of a battleship towards what is currently very much hostile territory.
It wasn't supposed to be, but Xilonen was never supposed to touch the ground there anyway. She was supposed to be on a battleship, how could she not be safe on a battleship?
At least it looks like she makes it.
They gave the Navy one job that actually matters and they blew it.
Admiral Zhang is dealing with the Navy's current problems. Varka already gave his orders to the troops on the ground and is stuck on the carrier.
"Doctor X, report," he says into his radio.
"I'm sorry, sir," the Navy Signals says. "They're jamming communications."
Reception would never do this to him, he's sure of it.
"The second she meets up with Papa they're going to be ditching anything incriminating in case they get caught," Varka says through gritted teeth. "We have an extremely short window to make contact with the teenage civilian who is a critical asset to national security before she goes to ground in a hostile country. Could you be so kind as to cut the fuck through?"
"I can't, sir."
Reception would never do this to him.
~
Hostile asses have been kicked and are no longer officially hostile. It's all a "misunderstanding" and both the Army and Navy have orders not to escalate to an actual war.
Varka has told the President he'll do his best but Xilonen is missing and the President has told him that he, the President, does not want to have to tell his wife something happened to her.
Varka has way bigger problems than the President or even his wife.
"Sir, Wonderland is on the phone again," Hertha tells him.
Varka picks up.
"I can't believe you haven't called me to update me on finding her," Alice says.
"That's because there are no updates," Varka sighs. "We don't want to risk letting them know that a critically important person is inside their borders at all, we don't trust them. Intelligence is confident she hasn't been caught."
He's pretty sure she won't be. She's terrifyingly smart and she's with Donatello - and, they're pretty sure, two commandos - and he's a devious little shit who treats orders like suggestions when he thinks he has better ideas at the best of times.
Varka wishes he'd apply for the officer corps, he's certain the guy could ace his way through the educational requirements and Varka would fast track him for general staff so hard. He's generally right about the better ideas.
Donatello is unfortunately one of those enlisted who see the officer corps as lazy and largely useless barring specific exceptions.
Varka would like him to consider being one of the exceptions but it doesn't look like happening.
The good news is he's one of the Adventure Team's best and, even more than the rest of them, he is fiercely protective of Xilonen.
Varka is confident the kid is unharmed because there are no reports of the truly massive amounts of violence he would expect to take place if she got so much as a papercut.
Alice does not have his level of trust.
"No updates? You haven't found her? You know she's overdue to come home, don't you? What am I going to tell my daughter?"
"That we'll get her back as soon as we can," he sighs.
"Oh, no, that simply won't do," she says. "I was talking to Pingping and she's thinking of going and finding her herself."
"Please ask her not to do that." That's the last thing the tense situation needs.
"Oh, I've discouraged her thoroughly for the moment, but she did say she was going to remind you that it's very important to find our dear girl."
"I know.'
Later that afternoon he's on the phone arguing with Intelligence when a bullet shatters his window and rips through his desk chair.
He finishes his argument with Intelligence and calls Alice back.
"Can you tell Killshot she could have just sent a memo?" he asks as politely as he can.
"She gave you a warning shot, dear, I'd take that if I were you."
~
{Xilonen}
"Can I get you a drink? Water? Something fizzy? Literally no other options?" Donny asks.
"I'm going to pretend you didn't use the W word," Xilonen says disapprovingly. "Fizzy is good. Raspberry if they've got it."
"She's twenty-one, bro, she can get booze if she wants," Kwame says.
"I don't want," Xilonen says firmly. She doesn't want alcohol and she doesn't want any drink that Donny didn't get her.
She had her drink spiked once at an off-base bar and it might have been a problem if Donny hadn't been there to start a brawl about it that got him busted back to Corporal.
Well. Technically Private, but Varka heard why (because Xilonen told him) and bounced him back up as far as regulations let him.
They're not even in an 'off base' bar, they're in a fully civilian dive bar in an entirely foreign country.
Only Donny knows she's actually sixteen. She's good at doing her makeup to look a little older than she is, even with just a compact she had in her pocket when the four of them got cut off and had to bug out.
In a semi-hostile country where Xilonen's boots were never supposed to touch the ground, and now it's just her and three soldiers all pretending to be civilians on a road trip to get somewhere they can be collected before Varka stops waiting and invades.
Xilonen approaches the pool table. "Hey. Can anyone play? This looks fun," she says, bright-eyed and perky.
"We play for cash," one of the current players grunts.
"That's cool! I'm really good, my brother says." She giggles. "I only really play against him, but he says I'm the best."
The other player on this table rolls his eyes. "I'm sure your brother thinks you're just amazing," he says sarcastically. "Fifty down there if you want next." He nods at the table.
"Fun!" Xilonen puts a fifty down as Donny comes back with her drink.
It's not Fonta, they probably don't have it, but it's bubbly and raspberry and non-alcoholic.
They're low on cash, and they've been financing this entire journey by way of hustling people who think Xilonen being young and blonde is incompatible with being skilled.
They passed through one town where people bet on speed chess. That was surprising.
And lucrative, because there was a guy there who was also on the hustle, so Xilonen won money beating him easily when he was trying to convince them he sucked and then won a lot of money when he suggested maybe they should raise the stakes and give him one last try, and then he played much better but Xilonen still won.
If Xilonen weren't travelling with two commandos and Donny this would be a much worse idea. Sometimes people want to fight about it. Xilonen has quite a lot of self-defence training that has not been necessary because the guys don't let anyone near her.
Her turn is up, and - seriously, this guy is trying to shark her on the first game?
Distracting noises, sudden calls to the bartender, one time he drops his cue and the cue she got - the only one in the rack - is trash.
It's the first game, she can't even.
She lets him pull ahead a little, then makes it look like a total accident when she jumps at his next dumbass attempt at distracting her and hits a 'wild' shot that drops all four of her remaining balls in the pockets.
Her opponent says a bad word.
Xilonen pockets the eight on her next shot and looks brainlessly happy about it. "Yay, I won!" She's thinking of Klee.
Not that Klee is brainless, Klee's just seven.
"Again. Double or nothing," the dumbass says, and Xilonen sees his friend watching, and - okay. His job is to be the incompetent hustler and then his friend will come in, they're a team.
Xilonen can work with that.
Two hours later she's taking ten grand off the table and they're both looking angry. "You think you can hustle in our bar?!" the second guy yells.
To Xilonen's surprise it's another local who answers. "She said she was good, Valberry. Are you getting mad she didn't lie?"
"Look at her. How good could she be?" 'Valberry' complains, and Xilonen blows a bubble and lets it pop because she feels the better than you is implied by the way she's tucking a stack of cash into Donny's bag.
It's their best haul by a huge margin. Xilonen usually only takes a few hundred tops.
"Let's go, babygirl, we've still gotta get to Stenaline tonight," Donny says.
They're not going to Stenaline and the closest Donny gets to calling her pet names is Doc... unless they're avoiding identifying anything.
No names, not even call signs.
"Sure thing, big bro," Xilonen says, and she's sure the would-be hustlers are noticing all his muscles.
They get back to the car, where Kwame and Aybak are a little cramped in the back seat, especially when Xilonen reclines hers a little, but Donny is driving and Xilonen is sleeping and this is the way they do it.
Donny hums softly at least until she falls asleep, so she can know he's there.
She wakes when he pulls over some time around dawn for them to switch places.
Kwame and Aybak joke sometimes about how this is Donny and 'Teyiz's' trip and they're just along for the ride.
It's not strictly accurate. When there's fighting they get to do that too and Xilonen hasn't needed to. But Xilonen is the one doing the hustling and Donny prefers to split the driving between him and Xilonen, because he's the one who made sure her driving meets his standards.
In theory they're, like, in danger or whatever. Varka and Cyrus are probably losing their minds and getting death threats from Granny and terrifyingly cheerful messages from Alice about the importance of finding Xilonen immediately.
But Xilonen's actually having a great time. They get breakfast at the first place they see in the next town that's open, and then it's back to Xilonen with Donny, and a couple of guys who weren't her guys but they're kinda getting there, and a whole lot of open road.
They should have enough money now to get them all the way to the border and pay the bribes they'll need to. It's a straight shot from here, probably only another day or two, and she's almost sorry.
~
{Varka}
He's got units stationed at the nearest friendly ports in neighbouring countries, ready to meet their lost lambs as soon as they make contact.
He's got Military Intelligence on the hunt everywhere he could get them where it's even plausible the group could be.
He's got a ringing phone that Hertha didn't announce, which means it's Reception, which means hope because he's pretty sure he's running out of time before Killshot and Wonderland start a war.
There's a red light that says it's an unsecure outside line. Under the circumstance incredibly promising.
He snatches it up. "Boreas."
"Hey bro," says a familiar girlish voice, and he slumps in his desk chair.
Then shifts when his hair catches on the bullet hole and pulls. He hasn't replaced the desk chair in case Killshot found out while he still hadn't retrieved Xilonen.
"Good to hear your voice, kid. You okay?" he asks.
"I'm great, dude, I had an awesome time. I'm thinking about taking the guys to check out this country too but I know Granny and Wonderland will be worried about me and you might, like, die or have to invade or something so I figured maybe I should call in first."
"I appreciate that," he says, rubbing his face. "I'm glad you had a great time." He tries to sound sincere about that. "Please don't disappear again, I would like to send someone to pick you up before Killshot shoots me, Witch tries out one of her little toys on me or Wonderland -" He pauses. "I don't know what she was planning but I know I don't want it to happen. Spark is getting really scared something happened to you no matter how we try to reassure her. Please come home for Spark."
"Oh, hey, short stuff is worried? Crap. Okay. Come and get me."
Tactics are a key part of his job.
~
He goes to meet her at the airstrip where her plane lands. They'll be taking her back to the Academy by helicopter to deliver her to Ping and Klee. Apparently they've got plans after Alice can get there to visit both Klee and Xilonen.
"Hey bro," Xilonen says, punching him lightly in the arm.
She only calls him general when she's pissed at him and never, ever calls him sir. He recognises the tactics at play and respects them, but he also kinda likes it because he's very fond of the kid. Informality lets him be closer to a friend.
And allowing it is a key factor in maintaining the relationship that means she'll work with them, and that is critical. He hates every second of it any time she's in danger, but if nothing else if the country falls she'll be in serious danger anyway.
Not actually the point with this incident, she was just supposed to be monitoring tech she developed because she thought it was a fun idea and it was not supposed to be dangerous.
"I don't think I've ever been so happy to see someone in my life," he says honestly. "Top work, Corporal," he adds to Donatello.
He'll have to get the man promoted again, even if he puts a note on his file not to put him up past sergeant. Anything higher rarely lasts with Donatello - he doesn't seem to like being promoted too far. Higher ranks get more paperwork and less action.
At least four times he's gotten himself in trouble by going AWOL to go and check that Xilonen was safe despite a total lack of reason to think she wouldn't be.
They board the helicopter. Xilonen takes the seat across from Varka where there are rows facing each other. Donatello sits next to her.
She's digging in a bag as they take off. "I got you presents," she says. "Here."
She passes him a souvenir paperweight and a letter opener designed to look like a claymore.
Varka looks at them and contemplates the notion of her taking time to go shopping for souvenirs - the bag looks pretty full - at any point in the period during which she has been missing.
And then he takes a deep breath. "Thank you," he says. "That was very thoughtful."
She smiles. "I took some awesome photos too. You can see them once I get them printed."
He nods instead of screaming. "That sounds great."