Echo Complex

An Indigo Citizen walks through a black door inside to the left of the door the Troubleshooters are standing outside of. They can hear him mumbling excitedly under his breath, something about being promoted from Blue Clearance.

"Ah, hello!" He greets them, "Don't worry about the door, I'll have the proper papers transferred to allow you to pass through one higher clearance door.

"In the meantime, you should get to know each other. You will all have to work together for awhile; well most of you." He looks at Nota-R-ATT, who seems very perturbed.

"So, the two of us?" E asks from the floor.

"Oh no, you and the other team will likely get along for a few co-op missions quite often. Uh.. would you like to go see a med-bot? There's one just down the hall to the right." He nods in a vague right-ish direction.

E shamble-crawls right-ish. The strip of red which he was following in search of the med-bot becomes very thin. He manages to barely stay inside as he looks for the med-bot. He finally finds a black square box on wheels with a red cross on it; just outside the red area. He gets close and tries to climb onto it, but it begins to roll away, causing him to fall back into the red line. E manages to hobble onto his legs and jump at it, flapping his wings like mad as extra propulsion. He grabs the side with his back legs hanging off.

"Get off me you mutant!" The med-bot yells as it tries to shake off E.

"Heal me you hunk of junk I've got plenty of credits!" E responds while being thrown around. It's really quite a spectacle for everybody else watching.

"NO!" The bot rams E into a black wall.

"Just fix my legs so I can get back to shooting trouble!" He grunts in return.

"NEVER!"

Saib and Nota look back and see E riding on and arguing with a med-bot.

"So uh... when will those papers get here?" Saib asks.

"Oh, a year or so. I used the rush option!" He replies, impressed with himself.

"Can't you just push or throw the mission briefing papers over to us?"

"Oh, I guess. There's still the problem of your roles."

"Roles?" Nota asks, politely, while sitting as close to the middle of the red strip as he can.

"Yes, you know: Team Leader, Communications Officer, Loyalty Assurance Commander, Hygiene Rear Admiral, Redundant Happiness Lieutenant, and Equipment Guy."

"... Can't you assign us those roles the same way?"

"Well, yes, but it would be against protocol!"

"We're Troubleshooters, we work for the Princess to stop great threats and protect Citizens! Surely our mission must be carried out quickly, lest the Complex be overrun by Commies!" Saib-R-MAN stated with faux pride.

"Yes, you're right, I suppose. Here, I'll get the papers and whatnot for you." He turns and walks back through the door.

Nota looks at Saib and says, "Wow, good job."

"You should take notes." Saib responds with a smug grin.

"HEEEEEEeeeeEEEEeeeLLLLLLLLppppPPPP MMMMMMMEeeeeeeEEEEEeee!" E-R-ASE shouts from behind them, spinning on top of the med-bot.

"You're almost out of clones, I need to preserve mine." Saib says to Nota.

"...And?" Nota responds.

She sighs, "We need to settle this problem with the med-bot. You can risk being killed because you've doomed already yourself. Go help."

Nota considers, with a grimace, his options. Eventually he gets up and walks vaguely in the direction of E and the med-bot. They are moving around quite a bit.

The med-bot is spinning around in one spot, for the time being, and shouting nonsense with E; who is speaking the same language to the med-bot. The area that it's spinning in is Green, about two meters away from Red Clearance flooring.

Nota jumps and smashes into it. He knocks it over and manages to stay on top of it. E saw Nota jump and managed to lift himself for a few moments while the bot fell, then crashed on top of it as well.

Four Green Citizens trot up to them and draw their laser pistols.

"No, wait, we're not in a higher Clearance area!" Nota smiles and points at the fallen med-bot, now silent.

"No, but you broke a piece of Friend Princess's equipment. That's treasonous, and punishable by death." A Green Citizen replies.

"What else is it punishable by?" E asks.

"Pattern Erasure." The same Green Citizen responds.

The Green Citizen is shot in the back by another. Who is then shot in the chest by another. Long story short, the entire room is now full of laser fire and shouts about Commies attacking.

Nota and E jump off the med-bot, eliciting a grunt of pain from E, and try to run to the door back outside. They both get to it unharmed, only to find it was locked from the outside. Their shouts of pain are unheard over the laser fire.

Saib waits outside, listening to the shouts and cracks through the door. A tube opens behind her in the black metal floor and E-R-ASE and Nota-R-ATT are flung from it and land on top of each other.

They stand up and shake themselves off.

"How'd you get out here? Did you die before us?" E-R-ASE asked.

"Nope, ran outside when I saw that Green Citizen shoot the other one. It was a brawl by the time I got here, so I locked the door."

"You did that? You killed us!"

"I needed to get the mission information and out safely. I had hoped you would've been able to escape as well, perhaps through an airduct. Oh well, all is well that ends well."

"What?" Nota asks.

"It's okay because in the end we got the important shit." Saib explains.

"Speaking of, let's take a look at our mission. It's about we started." E says.

"Yeah, and it can't go as poorly as everything else has." Nota adds optimistically.

"Right." Saib nods and sits down to look at the mission briefing.