Amelia's Blog

        “We are in over our head, C.J.”         “We are, yes.” They were staring at the imposing figure who was now advancing on Hem-Netjer Tepey. For once, neither of them knew what to do.         “You stand accused. What say you?”         The high-priest leaned against the wall, an eerie growl issuing from his throat. “I tried my best. I was betrayed!”         The creature’s eyes flared red, “Failure has no excuse. You were told this.”         “Should we leave?” Hitomi asked quietly.         “I don’t know.”         Unfortunately, seemed the beast heard them and turned its gaze on them. “You both shall witness this being’s fate. Such is decreed by the Great Anubis!” ...

        The two friends sat across from each other. Both were digesting what they heard from their “host” Hem-Netjer Tepey.         “Well, so much for being reasonable.         “I’m sure he thinks he’s being reasonable, Hitomi.”         “What he thinks and what reality is are two different things, girl.”         Instead of answering, C.J. looked up. “You notice all the wiring down the halls?”         “Yeah, pretty hacked together.”         “Since we’ve known that the Fourth Reich has been eating other organizations for a long time already, and I don’t really think Buck would want to make a deal, what say we get out of here and do some damage on the way?”         “Oh! I did...

        The guards escorted them to an enormous room. Hitomi had a hard time seeing the ceiling, but she did notice conduits and groups of wiring running high up on the walls. She must have been moving too slow, because the guard behind her gave her a vicious shove. She was going to turn around and slug the toad, but Siege caught her eye and minutely shook her head. Instead, she snarled at the guard in Japanese, who just laughed.         The guards stopped them in front of a wide dais with an obvious throne. It didn’t take long for the significance of this to sink in. Hitomi leaned in to C.J., “Well, I guess that answers the question if this guy has a god complex.” C.J. smirked, but the guard wasn’t amused. He slammed the butt of his gun into Hitomi’s back. “Quiet, worm.”         Hitomi whirled and narrowed her eyes. “Do that again, and you don’t want to know where I’l...

Underneath Antarctica          C.J. was stretched out on one of the benches in their cell while Hitomi paced slowly from end to end. They had been escorted into the cell over an hour ago and hadn’t seen anyone since.         “You’ll wear a trench in the floor if you keep that up.”         Hitomi didn’t bother responding. Siege could almost hear the gears grinding in her friend’s head. It didn’t take a genius to know she was furious for being caught, even though they went in knowing it was almost certainly a trap.                 “’Omi, sit. They’ll get us eventually.”         Hitomi glared at her. “This is maddening.”         “Of course it is,” C.J. raised a brow. “He’s trying to get us riled by making us wait.”...

500 miles south of McMurdo Station, Antarctica         Unlike the crawler they used in Greenland, this one belonged to Buck. It was heated, and quieter than the standard crawler. Once on their way to the coordinates Buck relayed, they took turns sleeping. Neither of them were strangers to long trips out to check things out.         Once they approached their destination, they stopped the crawler and bundled up. Their thermal suits worked to a degree, but in Antarctica it only went so far. They had state of the art cold weather gear and they were still cold. Carefully, they went over the area.         It didn’t take long to find the signs of a concealed entrance, and a small stone obelisk, mostly buried in snow and ice. It showed signs of wear and tear and looked as it had part of the facing chipped away. They looked at each other and went back to the crawler.  ...

Kangerlussuaq Airport, Kangerlussauq, Greenland         “Okay, what now?” Hitomi asked, her surprise evident in her voice.         “I know it sounds insane, Hitomi.” Buck sounded tired over the sattelite connection. Hitomi and Siege were in the “company jet”, waiting for approval for take off.         “We don’t hear a peep for months, then get a taunting letter by mail? ‘Omi’s right, Buck. Although, I wouldn’t call it crazy as much as an obvious trap.”         “I agree Cynthia. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t investigate. Low profile, though. Just because it’s a trap doesn’t mean it needs to be sprung.”         C.J. nodded slowly. “I suppose with just the two of us, we have a good chance of going in and getting out undetected.”         Hitomi nodded, “Trap ...

North Central Greenland; Unrecorded Ice Caverns         Hitomi was freezing. No, not freezing. That would require that she had any feeling left. It was warmer, if you could call it that, in the caverns away from the wind, but even the thermal suit under her parka didn’t help much. She walked as quietly as she could in the hard-pack of the glacier, dim blue hand lamp playing across the ice of the dead end in front of her. She clicked the radio in her gauntlet and whispered into it.         “Siege, you got anything? I haven’t run across anything down here. Not even animal traces.”         “Same here,” came the whispered reply, “I think we can write this one off, partner. I’ll radio for pick up. Meet you up top.”         “Sounds good to me. It’ll be nice to feel.” She thought she heard a snort as the radio clicked off. Shaking her...

        "That is a name I have not heard in many years."         The four of them were crowded in Buck's workshop, watching the older man's brow knit in confusion. "Last time I heard of this Beloved cult was before your parents died, C.J." He looked at her with an expression of regret and sorrow, and a lot of apology.         Siege stiffened at the mention of her parents, but didn't say anything. Hitomi put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "Why would they surface now? And why would they need to know you were still out there?"         "Hmm. Most likely because last time I saw them, they were fleeing from their burning temple."         Siege smiled a bit, "Did their leader have a jackal mask?"         Buck shook his head...

        The team squished through the tunnel, the thick mud on the floor telling the story of flooding in recent times. Even as they walked, they could hear the drip-drop of water in the background. Hitomi did not like this at all. The squishing mud made too good a cover for an ambush. She had a bad feeling about this. Usually, she listened to her gut. Last time she didn’t, she was captured at this very dock. She shook her head, “Hell with it,” she muttered.         Hitomi pulled the heads-up eye piece from her gauntlet and slipped it on. Tapping the side of the head piece, she engaged the scanners she built into her gauntlet. With a soft chirp in her ear, several dots appeared behind them. “Damn,” she clicked her radio and softly notified Siege.         “How many?”         “Ah, five or six. They’re hanging back.” She hit the ign...

        Hello, hello! This post brought to you by Sleep Deprivation! For when you absolutely cannot sleep overnight! -_-’ Yeah, sorry to cliffhanger you, but my brain not worky so good on no no sleep. But instead do leaving you with nothing, dear reader, here is the original character sheet I wrote out for Siege McCormick. Enjoy! * * * Cynthia Jane McCormick - (C.J.) C.J. or "Siege" to her friends, is known for her toughness, strength and patients, of of which border on the superhuman. Anyone who underestimates her for her size rarely does it twice. A hair under five feet and a shade over 100 pounds, she often would be the brunt of jokes or referred to as 'pint size'. One of the reasons for her tremendous patients is the amount of teasing and abuse she she endured growing up. She learned to shrug it off, or continually get in trouble for fighting. With that came a serenity that everyone who knows her envies.

        Siege grabbed her radio immediately, “Buck, come in. We’ve got a problem.”         She quickly filled him in. “By thunder! Good work, child, I’ll send some reinforcements, just in case. Blow the console.”         “You sure?”         “Yes. I’ll send someone to the next sites on the list. They’ve already got some of the plans, we can’t let them get anymore.”         “On it!” She clicked off and called to Hitomi, “Need your C4! Buck says blow it.”         “You got it.” With methodical quickness, they wired the console and the entrances, and made for the door, and wired that one too. They sprinted back to the ladder and climbed out. Just is case, they wired up some of the tunnel with the last of their explosives. They got the store owner out of th...

Hey everyone, happy Memorial Day for those of you in the U.S. This is later than I would have liked it to be, but still I wanted to make sure I got this up. Sorry about that, tomorrow's will be on schedule, and this one is roughly twice normal size :) I wanted to get to a beat, and I'm afraid I got a bit carried away with description! Anyway, I hope you enjoy! * * * Siege kicked through the floorboards, her steel-belted boots adding extra force to her already impressive strength. Two calculated kicks, and the floor opened to reveal a shaft with a ladder bolted to the side. “Man... I thought the whole point of a trap door was to conceal an entrance, not seal it with a whole box of nails.” Siege just arched a brow at her friend, before picking up cracked plank. “You’re right, ‘Omi. Someone put a lot of effort into sealing this up,” she gestured at the piles of carpet they pulled up, much to the chagrin of the shop’s owner. After leaving Buck, they...

        “Come in.”         The two young women smiled at Buck’s booming voice, feeling at ease after hearing it as they always did, despite the seriousness of the problem. They walked into his crowded workshop, stopping for a moment to listen to the soft sounds of Buck’s clockwork creations. The man looked up as they came around the corner of his workbench, being careful not to disturb the piles of gears and mechanical doo-dads that gave the room an almost steam-punk feel.         “Well. My favorite duo. What can I do for you?”         As usual, Siege went right into it, preferring not to waste time if she could help it. “I think I found the pattern. It took a couple hours of digging, but I think,” she paused, “I’m sure I found it.”         “Well, go on child, go on!”    ...

While Jeremy was trying his home made mech, Hitomi was puttering around in her workshop. Losing herself in her work was something she always did after a mission, regardless of how it went. It was her way of processing a mission. She was so deep in concentration that she missed Jeremy scuttling into her shop. “Hey, ‘Omi?” Jeremy stood there waiting. “Hmm? Hey, Jer. That the mecha you were talking about?” Jeremy beamed proudly, “Yup! It works pretty well, too. Almost quiet enough for the field with the rubberized tips. Still need to better soundproof the chassis though.” He scratched his head thoughtfully. “I want to be careful. Don’t want her to overheat.” Hitomi smiled at his enthusiasm. He was younger than her by five years and seemed younger than that even, with all his energy. It seemed boundless. “Try asking Buck for some of his breathable sealant. It’s got bacteria that move oxygen around. I bet that’ll help.” Jeremy nodded. “I’ll do that. T...

Closing the door behind him, Buck left C.J. to her meditations. He knew she would come away from it with a clearer head, and most likely some clear insight into the problem. Buck roamed the hallways of his team’s complex, as he usually did when he wanted to think. For as many years as he has been doing this sort of thing, you could always find him roaming the halls during tough cases. Back when he started, it was just him and one or two close friends. In the grand tradition of other of the so-called “pulp heroes” him and his friends would travel the globe on grand adventures righting wrongs and generally saving the world. Then the villains started getting serious. Then it became a responsibility to stop them. The stakes rose, and he lost them. One by one. Then, eventually, it was just him. Then he met young Siege’s father, Brian. It was true he was no longer as young as he once was, but the gallant and adventurous Brian brought out the best of him. A larger surprise was B...

Siege waved to Hitomi as they left Buck’s workshop, feeling frustrated and annoyed. Though she rarely let these things get to her these unidentified goons were really getting under her skin. They had made several seemingly unrelated raids over the past several weeks, and most of the raids were unsuccessful thanks to Siege and Hitomi. Quite a team, they were. Siege headed to her quarters and closed her door, wanting some quiet time to meditate. She did not like to be annoyed. Anything other than serene, really. Making sure she didn’t hurt someone or something she didn’t mean to took a lot of control and focus. She went to her meditation pillow and gracefully settled into the familiar lotus position. Breathing deeply, she cleared her mind went through the exorcises to let go of her frustration. Today was difficult, as she was not only worried about who these goons were, but also that Hitomi got caught today. It just didn’t happen. Hitomi was most likely just as worried ...

        Hitomi swore viciously in Japanese. She clicked her com and whispered urgently, “C.J.! Siege, are you there?”         No answer.         She swore again and checked the power level on her gauntlet’s readout. Almost empty. Another patter of blaster fire hit the cargo container she was hiding behind. If she didn’t get some backup soon, she’d be both pinned down and out of ammo.         Hitomi peered cautiously around the container, not seeing her assailants. She grabbed a rock from the small pile she’d been gathering and tossed it against a container across the aisle. As it clanked loudly, the container was hit with a hail of bullets. Must be low on energy too, Hitomi thought.         She tried the com again, this time she was rewarded with a broken transmission. “Hey! It’s ‘Omi! Come...