2013.10.29 - Missteps And Mayhem

This all started so innocent like! Pity it didn't stay that way for long...
To begin at, well, the beginning, Snake Eyes was following some bread crumbs on the Cold War organization Cobra. These bread crumbs lead him to Madripoor, the criminal city of the world. It has grown dramatically over the last few decades into an almost living and breathing -thing-. Sin on the other hand was checking a HYDRA cell before she ended up gassed, dearmed, and tossed into a cell. Well. That goes to show that, THAT HYDRA cell went independent. Of course, Sin is steaming mad, but knows they don't dare kill her because of who her Father is. Anyway, they just need to get close and she would snap their necks!
Now, more to the present...
Snake-Eyes was having his sneaky time: sneak, sneak, sneak. (He secretly whispers the words in his own head, all the ninjas do!) And while moving over the roof of the shabby building that HYDRA cell is currently storing warehouse items in, is where he finds out the roof isn't as strong as he thought it was.
And that is when Sin will be discovering that ninjas may act light, but they are actually REALLY, REALLY heavy. No kidding. Must be all that muscle. Mmmmm...muscle.
Snake Eyes hasn't been to Madripoor in /decades/, and he's quite frankly stunned with how much it has grown. He had believed the small hub of criminal activity would have self-destructed by now, but it has thrived instead. Perfect hunting grounds to go looking for information about Cobra... but it seems the criminal element are far more tight-lipped than even himself, leaving him with little to show for the trip. 
So, here he is, silently hopping rooftops looking for the next possible lead. Sneak, sneak, sneak. Or he was, until one leap from a higher rooftop onto an older, smaller one turns the 'sneak, sneak, sneak' into 'sneak, sneak, CRACK!' 
'Crack?' 
Snake Eyes barely has the time to register the wrong sound effect when the roof proves no resistance to his momentum, the surface shattering under his weight and sending him into the building itself. He tucks and rolls to protect himself during the fall, bouncing off of something soft before landing at a three-point crouch. He is noticeably less black-garbed, now a solid mix of deep grays and browns due to the dust and grime. 
He does take a moment to wipe his silver visor with clear visual disgust before looking around... and noticing someone on the ground where he had initially landed. Ahhhh... oops?
There wasn't even a cry of pain as Sin's eyes get wide and she accidentally 'catches' a Ninja, the air knocked out out of her as the 5'5" woman gets flattened and the ninja goes rolling right off. By the time Snake Eyes turns and wipes his visor, there is a cough and then a gasp from Sin. The red headed girl is dusty from the fallen in roof, and she coughs and gasps again cause of the dust. She lifts a red leather gauntlet hand and tries to knock the dust aside as she struggles a bit to sit up. "You...suck as a rescuer...," she says gaspily, and in German. She works on try to get the dust off her face and red, red hair, obviously dyed. She coughs again and finally gets a good look at Snake Eyes as she is sitting up. "Huh?" That was an English exclaimation, as apparently the young woman just realized she doesn't know the man before her!
Snake Eyes knows at least enough German to understand Sin's initial statement, and his head tilts questioningly at the comment. Rescue? He didn't even realize someone was in here, much less needed rescuing. (What can he say? He's a Joe, not a superhero. Those guys have a sixth sense for that kind of thing.) At least she seems to be alright, despite getting a full-grown ninja dropped on her head. 
It becomes quite obvious that he clearly isn't who she was expecting, if her surprise at seeing him is any indication. So, he shifts his stance to be kneeling on one knee and rests his left arm on his bent knee, turning his body so his back is facing a corner and he has the best view of the area possible. He gives Sin a brief wave with his right hand, a belated greeting of sorts, before resting it on the silverish gauntlet on his left wrist. 
"<Are You Alright?>" A digitized male voice, identical to a (very old) computer's default Text-To-Speech, whispers from the vicinity of the very dusty ninja.
The cell is dirty and dusty now, with some muted light coming in from above. It will be night soon. There is noise outside. The cell does not have bars really, but does have a heavy wooden door.
Sin coughs again, "I'll live. And you are talking like a robot," she says in English, her German accent slight. But she is moving to get up, hiding her pain but Snake Eyes may catch a few minor signs of it. She can't way much over one-hundred pounds and has a slight, though muscular frame. She rolls her shoulders and starts to head toward the side of the door so when is opens she is not immediately visible. Another cough and then she holds her breath so she doesn't cough again and can listen. Her stance shifts into a fighting one. She may have used the term rescue, but she doesn't seem a damsel-in-distress.
Snake Eyes bobs his head to one side at the 'talking like a robot' comment, shoulders twitching in a minor shrug, but does not 'speak' further. There was once a time when he would not have been able to even do /that/ much, relying on hand-signals and gestures to get his point across. That were... annoying. 
He does notice how Sin is moving, seeming to favor her ribs in particular and perhaps other aches and pains, but his visor shows that there doesn't seem to be anything seriously wrong. She doesn't say how she got into this situation, and he doesn't ask. What with activity building on the other side of the door, there's no time for that anyways. 
As she moves to hide at the door's hinge side, Snake Eyes slinks back to hide more thoroughly in the dusty shadows against the wall, visor pinned on the closed door. One hand reaches up to the katana at his back while the other remains clear to grab a weapon on his person at the first opportunity.
Sin actually smirks when Snake Eyes moves in such a manner, approval flickering across her dark eyes. She waits, and the door opens outward, a soldier in green with a yellow H, but his hood off moves to step into, "Sister Si...," and Sin is moving. She steps forward, a hand strike moving her fingers toward the neck of her opponent and crushing his windpipe before she grabs his uniform front and with a red thigh high boot lifting up to brace against the door frame she literally yanks the guy right in and forward, ripping his gun free form his belt as he flies past.
This leaves Snake Eyes to handle the next one or two that come barreling in, someone in the background yelling a command of: "Overwhelm her! Do not kill her!"
Snake Eyes snaps one hand out as soon as the door opens, razor-sharp shuriken embedding themselves into the second person in line while Sin deals with the first person through the door. He then reaches down to the submachine gun at his hip, spraying the entryway with a blast of bullets as another person tries to charge in and gets turned into swiss cheese for his efforts. 
He then reaches to the bandolier across his chest and pulls free a round grenade, pinning himself against the doorframe opposite of Sin and rolling the explosive into the area beyond. To make sure the combatants don't try to 'return it to sender', he grabs the heavy wooden door and mostly closes it--not enough to lock them in again, but enough to shield them both from the resulting 'BOOM' seconds later.
Sin takes the saftey off the small sub-machine gun she now holds, and ducks down as she crouches on the other side of the door. Her ears ring a bit at the explosion, but she then winks over at the silver visored man. "I love a little chaos. No idea who you are, but I'm liking you already," and her smile is definitely on the wicked side.
There are a few more twitches as the last of the air dies inside the minion's chest and he stops moving.
"Throw it open for me, won't you?" Sin's words are practically purred. And when it is done, Sin actually throw rolls herself out there, and even as she comes up, there is a spray of bullets as she works to clean out any survivors, "That's for gasing me!" As if the yelling matters. Well, Snake-Eyes found a noisy one! But when the noise dies down, she runs a hand through her wild hair and smirks, and then starts to head toward a nearby table, spitting on one of the bodies as she heads toward it and where her handgun and knives rest. Some of the knives ended up knocked down to the ground though and she has to pick them up, grumbling as she does so.
Snake Eyes moves aside the now-dead mook with a foot and opens the door again, letting Sin out first before following her out with the submachine gun raised at the ready. He doesn't join into finishing off the survivors, instead watching Sin's six to make sure nobody tries to shoot them while their attention is elsewhere. Nobody even tries, most likely killed by the grenade or caught in Sin's firepower, and his visor's sensors reveal only cooling heat signatures once Sin finishes clean-up. 
He almost reluctantly releases his grip on his katana, letting it remain sheathed on his back, and lowers his gun back to his side. He shifts to an almost casual 'at-ease' stance, hands folded behind his back, as he surveys their surroundings a little more closely. Crates, mostly, and none of them revealing what they hold within. So they're in a warehouse of some sort...? 
"<What Is Going On Here?>" The TTS voice asks, this time at normal conversational volume.
Sin glances toward Snake-Eyes and realizes...that is likely not is real voice and she hrms....technology to speak? But she slides the knives home in her corset, and gets her handgun into the hostler strapped to her thigh, hanging from her lopsided belt. She mmmmms, "Betrayers." The submachine gun, she drops as not needed and moves toward the ninja. She pauses before the man, one hand on her hip, the one away from her gun as a smile curls about her painted lips. Her freckles are almost fully hidden by the light dusting she suffered.
"You new to Madripoor sweetie?" Her head almost seems to tilt slightly to one side, a coyness to her body language, and that smile that curled up earlier betrays soft humor. "What you go by hot stuff?"
Ah, that would make sense. Internal infighting, not terribly uncommon, and Snake Eyes happened to drop in and assist one side of it. Well, it wasn't like he could just hop back out the hole he'd made--the rest of the roof could have caved in if he tried, and he still would have been stuck. 
He doesn't budge from his at-ease stance, his full attention turning to Sin as she approaches. His body-language is completely neutral, but there is a slight air of readiness about him, just in case. This /is/ Madripoor, after all. "<It Is Larger Than I Remembered,>" he replies, the TTS voice void of inflection and offering no insight as vocal tone would usually provide. Noteably, the 'voice' is slightly muffled. Originating from behind him? 
To her inquiry into his identity, he does not reply immediately. In fact, several long seconds pass before he 'speaks' again. "<Snake Eyes. Yourself?>"
A smile lights up on the girl's face, "Sister Sin." And she...actually looks happy, not seeming to mind the neutral body language. "It has changed though. Though just three years for me, and it has already flipped faces and changed hands of power. It's a pretty wishy-washy city really, don't care for it much." She mmmms softly, thoughtfully. "What brings you here though? Talent usually avoids this place unless absolutely necessarily, and other than the roof blunder...well, I won't mention it again. Everyone has their blunders, and nobody likes them repeated." So no repeating Sister Sin got gased!
Snake Eyes gets the hint quite easily, and sees no issue with it. It's not as if he can, and he has no (current) warning flags on Sin's name anyways that would make him entertain the thought. He still doesn't drop the at-ease stance or the neutralized body language, though. 
"<Information.>" He reaches into a pocket and pulls out what looks like a patch from a uniform--from the frayed edges of blue fabric, probably torn directly from one. It looks like the head and 'chest' of a red king cobra, fangs bared and hood flared, stitched onto a blue background. Snake Eyes head tilts incrimentally, silently questioning if the insignia means anything to her.
There is a bit of recognition, "Cobra," she identifies with curousity. "What you want with them Snake Eyes? They blow something up of interest to you?" Apparently, Sister Sin knows they are a terrorist organization. She doesn't bother playing dumb, this is Madripoor, the dumb die quickly anyway.
There is a slight press of Sin's painted lips, and she finally nods, "Come on, you can talk while I wash up a bit." Sin is a girl after all! She starts to head down the warehouse second, and stop at a short side hall. Down that way is a small bathroom. She just opens it, leaving the door open as she turns on the sink to splash water on her face and grab some paper towels to start cleaning the worse of the dust off herself. There really isn't any fear from the woman in response to Snake Eyes' interest in Cobra. Nor any wariness of betrayal, though obviously she has just been betrayed.
Snake Eyes is naturally defensive and doesn't trust much of anyone, much less someone he's just met in the middle of what is possibly the worst city on the planet. Or close enough to it. Still, Sin is at least willing to talk, so might as well take the chance for the moment. 
He pockets the insignia and silently follows Sin, brushing off the worst of the dust and such off of his full-body suit to make it less gray. It helps, a little. As she enters the small bathroom, he leans back against the ajacent wall and clasps his left wrist with his right hand at about belt-level. 
"<Not Quite.>" He rests the back of his head against the wall, apparently staring at the seam between ceiling and wall across from him. "<Keeping Tabs On An Old Enemy. If They Still Exist.>" It /has/ been thirty years, and data about what has happened to Cobra has been infuriatingly sparce for a supposed 'age of information'.
"Old? I could lie to you, they don't exist. Long dead and buried, let it lie." A bit of a smirk though as Sin finishes cleaning off her face and steals a side-long look at you. She looks younger with most of her lipstick removed and her eye make-up fading. She works to remove the smudges with a fresh, wet paper towel. "I won't. Lies don't make reality, and then they bite you in the ass later, and I just made an enemy of a potential ally. But I will tell you this. Sometimes, it's best to let old enemies lie. I'm not 'in' on the details of it, but they may be in process of absorption, or they may fight for independence. They have their uses and resources, but they aren't quite as powerful as they were back during the Cold War Era." The papertowels are thrown away, and Sin grabs a fresh one for drying, throwing it away before she checks her work in the cracked mirror.
Sin mmms softly, wetting her hands and grabbing another papertowel to work a bit through her hair to get the worse off, and then another towel to only dampen this time and work on her leather. "Shit, I really am a mess. Likely have to punch the first one that asks," frowning a bit."
Times really have changed. One of the most powerful terrorist organizations, now in obscurity and possibly under the command of another group entirely. Snake Eyes would be lying if he wasn't disappointed... but it wasn't a completely useless hunt. At least he knows (and knowing is half the battle--GI JOE!) 
No. Bad. 
The ninja glances around the corner and tucks in his chin faintly. "<Your Honesty Is Appreciated.>" He digs in a pocket for a moment, then reaches over to the sink and places what appears to be a small jar of leather/fabric cleaner in front of Sin.
Sin pauses and then groans in pleasure, "I think I'm falling in love." She picks it up, and starts to make use of it properly. "And no problem." She does pause a moment, before she continues. "I will say this though. If they fight and win...be scared. If they lose....well," she winks over at you, "The other group was already scary." Flirtation. Iffy on is Snake-Eyes is used to that, especially right after blood was spilled.
"So, you don't seem like a hero to me. Merc?" Sin sounds actually really interested as she buffs as well as she can while doing it quickly and -wearing- the goods. Taking them off right now would quicky prove to be an...awkward moment.
Snake Eyes steps back outside of the bathroom, almost perfectly returning to the stance against the wall he had been at earlier. "<Understood.>" 
He seems almost immune to the flirting itself, either the bad girl archetype not appealing to him or not interested at all. Most likely the latter. Nothing against Sin herself, but it's possible his heart got left behind in the accidental timeskip. 
He tilts his head in visible thought, or at least a display that nonverbally brings across the consideration. "<No. Searching.>" He offers a brief shrug.
Sin is quite efficent in cleaning up her armor, concentrating on it a bit until she gets the worse of it cleaned up, before she moves to recap it and moves out to hand it back to Snake Eyes. "Well, if you interested in steady work with lots of fun, let me know," she says with a playful smirk. "But you should relax some. I don't know what's under the mask, and part of me doesn't even care, but I like how you move." But she then shrugs, "But seems I'm usually striking out these days. All the cute ones are either mentally retarded, mean, or just not interested." Which translates to: Hero, Dominateering, and Snake-Eyes. Snake Eyes gets his own classification.
Snake Eyes inclines his head as he accepts back the jar of fabric cleaner. His instincts tell him Sin is dangerous... but why spurn a possible source? Especially since he is in no state to be nearly so picky. "<You Will Be Kept In Mind.>" 
Absolutely no hint if that's a good thing or not, or in what context. He would be mildly flattered that he gets his own designation, though, not that he'd show it. He's an infuriating ninja like that.
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