(OOC: First off, apologies for how long this post has taken to get out. I’ve kinda been on an extended absence due to a combination of mental health and university and so I’ve either been too busy to write, or just not in a place to. That said, I’m hoping to get things back up and running. With that in mind, having agreed this with everyone, I’m skipping across the night to the morning and Giles’ character actions have been agreed with Regal)
With things seemingly having settled down, the groups dispersed their various ways. Tonya wrapped her arm around Dante and vanished with him, the pair appearing in a bar in Windhoek where they had their ‘evening’ drinks under the mid-afternoon sun. Tonya was midway into her third beer when she spoke. “I’m not going to ruin these beers by starting an argument, but I’m going to say this to you now. If Ashley asks me to run missions for the Resistance, and I figure she will, I’m going to say yes. I know you don’t trust me in active combat yet, and that’s… fair, but I caused… this”, she waved her hand at the TV screen in the corner of the bar, detailing a series of protests in South Africa over a government blood register of all Savants, “one way or another, and I can’t sit in Chile and ignore that.” Swigging down the rest of her beer and putting up her hand for another, she didn’t bring the topic up for the rest of the evening and several hours later, the two of them stumbled tipsily out of the bar together, teleporting first to a street in Quito, Ecuador, before finally appearing back in their safehouse, with her collapsing in bed next to Dante, with only one midnight panic attack. As the next morning came, the pair stumbled out of bed at 11 and, a short shower later, they were ready to go for the day. “I presume you want to see Harper and Giles today? We’re an hour ahead, so they’re probably just getting up, shall we?”
Ashley, just glad that things appeared to have worked out, headed out from the corridor and, speeding up rapidly, arrived at her quarters in under a minute. She knew she was going to have to have a meeting with Carlo about the events of the day and pinged him a message on the base’s Intranet. Searching through her closet, she found what she was looking for, and pulled it off of the clothing rack, throwing it on the bed before she headed out. The next hour or so was spent running over a summary of the events of the last couple of days with Carlo. She was glad the Kasumi mission had worked out, that had been part of her argument for expanding the external ops for the Resistance. A solid ten minutes were spent okaying the run through of the Angel and Markus rescue mission, which Carlo agreed on the proviso that Kasumi didn’t leave the base. Ashley’s next plan, however, took a full half an hour of argument. “Correct me if I’m wrong Carlo, but our best chance of beating Raypool is by making sure that the people who support him don’t get back into government on November 3rd, am I wrong? So, if we’ve got something that could show Turner has been blatantly lying, and we can prove Sandra Meadows right, just imagine”. The argument continued, Ashley threatened to cancel every operation until after the election, Carlo threatened to kick her out of the base and take all her resources, and the two finally reached an agreement. Their meeting concluded, Ashley left the room and that was that. Just grabbing a quick dinner and informing the caterers that they were serving two people rather than one in Harper’s room, she headed up to her room, reading over reports from several field agents, advising a confrontation avoidance plan in New Mexico for the next couple of days, and deciding which sites to attempt to infiltrate in California to lift prison data on Savants. This was her life now. Read reports, send orders, run the occasional field mission. Planning operations had always been a favourite part of her time in the SAS, organising field provisions, less so. As she finished her self-mixed G&T, she spotted the time and slowly rose from her chair, sighing as she swiped down her computer interface, pulling her top off as she collapsed into bed, wrapping herself in her duvet before drifting off to sleep.
It was shortly after breakfast had been delivered when there was a knock at Giles and Harper’s door. Whoever answered the door would find Ashley, casually dressed in a tank top and leather trousers, holding two suit bags in her left hand. “May I come in?”, as Giles gave his assent, sword in hand out of a seeming distrust, Ashley sighed internally. “I get that you don’t trust me, but I promise I’m on your side. I spoke to Carlo and I’ve convinced him to leave the two of you in peace, so long as you don’t go out of this wing alone which I figure you won’t have much of a problem with. Anyway, I come bearing gifts.” Ashley placed the suit bags on the table and opened one up, pulling one of Giles’ suits from the bags. “After the incident, we had a fair amount of your clothes still at the base. I didn’t know if you’d made it or not, but I kept them, and our seamstress had a look over them. Her power allows her to strengthen materials beyond any normal limit whilst maintain their previous form and structure. It feels the same, but you could take a couple of bullets to the chest and walk away barely winded. I don’t know if you’ll want to use them, but I don’t need them, and I’d rather you had them than didn’t.” Slowly offering out her hand, Ashley smiled, a sadness in her eyes. “I know we’ve done wrong by you and I can’t fix that, but I want to try and help give you some peace and some help, to make up for what's been done.”
