Sytry put a finger to his lips to shut Aizen up.
"Not now. Be quiet."

He looked in the back through a small window in the truck's cab.
"Yoshi, do NOT use force unless it is necessary. I repeat, do not use force. We need as much of an advantage as possible. Krystal, stand by. You hear one gunshot, you get ready. Yoshi, whenever you're ready."

OOT: My bad! I thought someone else wanted to say something first!

"Mhm,"
Yoshiko stepped off the truck and walked toward the shotgun seat.

"Hey Handsome."

Yoshiko subtly smiled.
"Hi There."
He looked at Sytry with his bland expression again.
"What am I picking up again?"

Krystal began to crank a handle on the side of her railgun to magnetize the bullets and push more energy into the capacitors.
"Ready and willing, sir." She saw she was saluting automatically and quickly went back to being quiet and avoiding eye contact.

"They'll have the information packaged in a air-tight cylindrical canister. Get that, bring it back, we go."

The men guarding the drop-off point watched the truck curiously. It seemed to be taking an awful time to get itself ready for the pickup...

"They're getting worried. Go, now. And good luck."

The guards had no reason to doubt the group. After all, they had arrived in the appropriate format, in the correct truck, and this guy looked like he was from some deadly elite special unit. Far above their pay grade. And authority.

The guard responsible for the package leapt to attention.
"Here it is, sir. Be careful, the contents are very fragile."
He passed Yoshi a clear plastic cylinder, the blurred contents inside frozen in some sort of stasis, green markings with the image of a thunderbolt striking a griffin adorning the canister.
"So... how much are we going to get our pay raised for this then?"

Becoming more concerned by the second, Terios radioed the front of the truck.

"What's going on up there? Do we have the package or not? We've got some people looking are way, I think they're starting to notice that something's wrong."

He readied his gun, prepared for the worst.

The guards were starting to get a little unnerved.
These people did not resemble the standard goons. And for a special unit, they seemed very undisciplined...

Sytry rolled his eyes.
"We're good. Yoshi, secure the package."
He revved the engine.
"Let me know when it's set and we get going. Hurry."

Without further ado, Sytry floored the accelerator, and they took off.

They had perhaps traveled half a mile or so when the radio crackled.
"This is Olympus, package has been notified as collected. Confirm, over.
Sytry took the receiver.
"Olympus, package collected, over."
"Good. Return to Base Ceta. Over and out."

Sytry's eyes widened.
"Oh. Base Ceta. Shit."
Then he turned off the main roads and headed out towards the countryside, reaching a small layby.
"Everyone out. Get the package, we bail right now."

Sytry was out of that vehicle like it was on fire and the moment everyone was out, he went in the back, took a grenade from a supply cabinet and in five seconds the truck was ablaze.
Then he took the package from Yoshi.
"I'll carry this."

He looked back at Aizen, looking slightly hurried.
"You follow. If you don't, we drop you."
He looked at the others. "We have a trek ahead. Back the way we came. Get walking."
That said, he skidded down the ditch, jumped the small stream, and started walking deeper into the slight forest...

Krystal was stressed.
"Why are we running?! What's Base Ceta?!"

Terios readied his gun and called out to his squad-mates.

"Krystal, less questions and more running! Yoshiko, if there were ever a time where we really needed you to focus, it'd be now!"

He then radioed Sytry while running into the forest, occasionally checking back to make sure the others were still with him.

"So, what's the plan? Please tell me that you came up with a plan in case something like this happened."

Sytry ignored Hikaru's horseplay as they moved through the undergrowth, on course towards the outskirts of the big city, rural, tight poor streets.
"Base Ceta is not somewhere we want to be. It was my old base - and it was also known as a link closing ground. Translated, if someone knew something they were not supposed to, they were asked to report to Base Ceta. Where they would be summarily executed."
He emerged from the foliage and started marching towards the nearest dusty unused warehouse.
"Seeing as there's no way they could have known about the takeover, that must mean we've been marked down. Just carrying that package is a death sentence. So either they don't want to chance the fact that we disobeyed orders and looked at the information, or that they want to keep anyone - not just us - from reaching the Sword, and wiping out all evidence that it even existed. Bottom line, the trucks are monitored, so we needed to ditch that, and we need to reach a secure point where we can study the package and make our next move."

What Sytry was deliberately NOT telling the group was that no doubt the package's casing was also lined with tracking filaments - meaning that at this very moment, the Mythic Directive were probably sending some very unpleasant things their way. But one cursory glance at Krystal told him that she was teetering on the verge of panic, and he needed her as cool as she could be. This approach would guarantee that she would keep calm - right up until they arrived, but that was something he could address later.

A cursory wrench of the old steel door revealed that it was unlocked, and inside was nothing but a vast expanse of space, a few packing crates, two tables and a few lengths of rusty chain.
"Everyone get inside. Come on, we're almost clear."

Terios sighed deeply as he found a wall to lean against and slid down to the floor.

"So basically, we're not out of the woods yet. I thought that everything was going a little too well...I hate it when I'm right about stuff like that."

He looks over to Sytry.

"How are we gonna do this? Shoot our way out or try to sneak past them? Whatever we're doing, we'd better make it quick...those Directive guys aren't really known for being late to the party, if you catch my drift."

Sytry's response was to kneel down in the middle of the floor, and unscrew the package.
Inside was a single piece of parchment. Old, frayed, torn, but the words on it were readable - or maybe not -

"This is either coded, or in some sort of language I've never heard of."
Sytry studied it as intently as he could.
"There are hieroglyphs, cursive texts, looping codes, inverted wire type... this thing is a ink labyrinth. We're not going to solve it here."
He took a thin object, cylindrical, out of his pocket. It resembled a ballpoint pen.

At that moment there was the sound of a car engine drawing up outside, and another and another.
"...Hikaru, give me eyes. Everyone else, take cover, now!" Sytry hissed urgently, fiddling with the device he held.

Krystal tried to get Hikaru to stop, but she got pushed away before she could work up the courage. She turned around as soon as she was hidden. Shee took a deep breath, brought up her railgun, and kept it trained on the nearest soldier.
"What is she doing?!" Krystal whispered sharply to Sytry.

Sytry's heart nearly tore it's way out of his chest... then the pace slowed as he realized she was playing the best card they had.

The soldiers didn't have much in the way of details. It was:
1: Get to location.
2: Kill everyone at location.
3: Retrieve package and return to base.

They had expected heavy resistance. What they had not expected was for one of their targets to literally put herself out in the open and openly engage them in light-hearted flirting.

Some of the soldiers immediately looked around, suspecting an ambush.
The shotgun rider immediately leveled his gun at Hikaru, as did several others. The tank moved it's cannon to focus on the rusty steel doors of the warehouse. Two turret jeeps copied. The third aimed dead at Hikaru.

"Have you come to negotiate surrender?" the shotgun rider said tersely, not daring to underestimate them.

Sytry was almost biting his tongue as he finally got the stolen camera to work, and he immediately started snapping pictures of the text through the tiny screen, making sure he got every word.
"This is a USB camera. Used in spy work."
He looked out at Hikaru.
"If we'd started a firefight, they would have blown us to bits. Her approach not only buys us time, it throws them. They're used to simple jobs, simple fights. The longer she's out there, confusing them, the longer we've got to come up with a counter attack..."
He took as many pictures as he dared, praying Hikaru knew what she was doing...

Terios stared blankly at the scene that unfolded before him.

"So, this...this is really happening right now, isn't it?"

He looked over to Sytry and whispered.

"Come on, is this really the time to be taking pictures? We need a plan in case this doesn't work out."

He pulls a grenade out and motions to the tank.

"It's a special kind of grenade that should knock out that thing's circuits for a while. I brought it with me just in case we ran into this kind of problem. Just a thought."

Sytry finished taking photos.
His mind raced.
Then -

"I've got an idea. Follow me."

--------------------------------------------------------------

A few seconds later, every gun was raised, every weapon locked.

"HERE'S WHAT YOU WANT!"

Sytry had emerged from the warehouse behind Hikaru, carrying the container, something locked inside.

"HERE'S THE DEAL. YOU GIVE US A JEEP, YOU GET THIS. WE ALL GO HOME."

"Oh really?" the shotgun driver snarled, training his gun on Hikaru. A few followed suit.
"And what's to stop us blowing this bitch's head off if we don't get it?"

In response, Sytry brought out the railgun he'd borrowed from Krystal in his other hand and leveled it at the canister.
"Your call, soldier. You give us a jeep, you get your mission objective. It's all on you, soldier. All on you."

There was a silent standoff, the men frozen with indecision.

"Trust me, I've worked for them. Your lives will mean nothing if you fail this mission. Why risk it?"

That seemed to clinch it.
"Fine," the man snarled, then reached forwards, grabbed Hikaru, and pulled her into a lock, gun aimed at her head.
"But we're taking this one back as insurance."

Sytry swore.
Then...
I hope you're as good as you seem, Hikaru...
"Deal. Give us the Jeep. Now."

The nearest Jeep emptied.
"Everyone, onto the Jeep, NOW." Sytry said tersely, his eyes on the vast array of guns leveled at them...