2749/Curious Gem Capers

Curious Gem Capers
Date of Scene:	07 August 2015
Location:	Urbania
Synopsis:	Two Homeworld Gems capable of moving oceans and conquering planets, rob a toy store.
Cast of Characters:	Blurr, 836, 849

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Peridot (836) has posed:
    It had been an otherwise mundane day. Pigeons had roosted, and the rats scurried along the gutters same as they had done the day prior. It would have continued being a boring day, had there not been an increasingly loud commotion coming from the inside of Captain Fun's Gamery and Toy store. A place normally reserved for laughing, smiles and merriment; Fun time junction had been invaded by aliens. Literally. Captain fun was not equipped to handle this alone.
    "What the? Get your touch stumps off me, you clod!"

    Things went from 'commotion' to disturbance as the window suddenly shattered and a large heavy set man wearing a pirate costume flew through the glass, rolling onto the pavement, adding a few cuts to his growing collection of bruises and hurt pride. Though the window pane, stepped Peridot. A green skinned woman with large diamond shaped hair style. She carried a box with one arm. Oddly enough, it was stuffed to the brim with... video games, and comic books. The other hand pointed at the old pirate, her disconnected fingers pointing accusingly. "Did you see that, Lapis? It just walked up and grabbed my arm!" She squinted, gritting her teeth. "There is no telling what manner of diseases it carries." She went on wiping her arm. "Uyuck!"

Lapis Lazuli (849) has posed:
    Lapis steps out of the window, gracefully avoiding the sharp broken shards that line the once-was window. On her back is a large backpack shaped like a puppydog filled with the additional accoutrements gathered through the store, including a cookie-cat stuffed plushy loosely hanging from the side. A duplicate pirate-man made out of water follows Lapis from behind, silently holding some additional toys and items without getting them wet somehow.

    "We should go," Lapis says with a hint of concern, though notedly not towards the pirate store man. "We need to get this stuff back to the ship." She stops once out on the sidewalk, the water-pirate mimic stopping right behind her. It's been following her ever since she drew it out of the fountain.

Blurr has posed:
    Aliens, you say? Well, it would appear that today, Peridot and Lapis are not the only aliens in the area. They might be the only immediately -obvious- ones, though.

    A young blond-haired man appearing in his late teens is standing outside the shop, leaning casually against a sleek blue sports car that must certainly have been a custom job because it looks so futuristic that it's practically out of place even in a city like Urbania. "Hey ladies," He smirks at the unfortunate store owner and nods at the two females. "you look two like you need a getaway ride." As he speaks, the sound of approaching sirens can be heard.

Peridot (836) has posed:
    Peridot nodded. Though she seemed less worried than Lapis, she was no less alert, looking left and right. "Did we get everything we need? This place is crawling with vermin and I would prefer to not have to come back for more of this.. ugh.. useless crap." She shifted her weight to re-position the box. Then raised her arm. Her robotic looking fingers detached and interlocked to form her holopad. On it, digital imagery presented itself- mostly a green orb with a windshield. With her single remaining digit, Peridot tapped the screen, the pod blinking a few times as if acknowledging a command.

    At the blonde mans greeting, Peridot doesn't look up. "We have one, thanks." She mentions casually before blinking and looking up, as if a little surprised that they had been greeted so casually. "And what.. what exactly are you supposed to be? One of the humans?"

Lapis Lazuli (849) has posed:
    Lapis nods in response, "It looks like it." She tugs a bit at the strap to her backpack, the backpack itself squeaking a little bit from the squeazetoy inside making the sound. "It's not useless!" Lapis shoots back, "It's kind of funny, actually." She sounds amused if anything by the various toys. They are kind of silly. Why's one shaped like a cheeseburger? Isn't that supposed to be a human food? Lapis looks over towads the man across the street as he calls out at them. At the same time, the pirate dude squabbles back to his feet to confront the water mimic. Just as he's about to lay a hand on the mimic's shoulder, a fist pops out from the back of the water mimic's head and punches the guy in the face.

    Lapis doesn't even seem to notice what just happened. "Is it.. Isn't that one of the human vehicles?"

Blurr has posed:
    The young man shakes his head. "Pff, what does it -look- like?" he asks in response to both of their questions, laughing. Maybe they aren't the brightest. Then he shrugs when Peridot says they already have a ride. "Oh, well how fast is it? I'm guessing not very fast, since it isn't here yet." he remarks, glancing about to see if any unusual looking vehicle is approaching.

Peridot (836) has posed:
    Peridot scrunched her lips together. "Fast enough, considering it wasn't built for this." She answered. "I should have known we couldn't gather some plastic trinkets that barely classify as baubles without someone having a problem." And, as bidden by its master, appeared a large green pod from the sky. It lowered down to the ground, and though initially it looked as though it contained no entry way. One presented itself from the seamless orb and a door way opened up. After which Peridot promptly tossed her box of toys into the vehicle.

    "Bunch of frightened mewling kittens with... grab hands!" She said with some venom towards the beaten old pirate man before turning her attention to Lapis. "Alright, let's get out of here before we have to level the whole block.""

Lapis Lazuli (849) has posed:
    On the waiting pod is one of the robonoids. Its round body makes it roughly the size of a grapefruit, and it has little nubby levitating peglegs. On its outer surface is a rather well drawn rendition of Elvis' face, with muttonchops, done in permanent marker. It's immediately covered by all the toys that Peridot dumps in. The water mimic is next to dump things into the pod before it splashes down onto the ground as a puddle. Lapis stares at Blurr for a couple more moments, before walking towards the pod to climb in herself.

Blurr has posed:
    Oh, so that's their ship, eh? As Blurr is sitting there in vehicle form he is quickly scanning the outside, and also the inside as soon as the door opens, doing his best to learn everything he can about them.

    The avatar just smirks and holds up a two-fingered salute as Lapis stares at him, but as soon as she looks away, or more specifically as soon as neither of them are looking, the projection suddenly disappears from where it was previously standing and reappears behind them in the doorway to the pod. "So," he begins casually. "What's all the loot for? Having a party? Christmas in the summer? Someone's birthday?" He stares at the robonoid. "Is that a weird representation of...Elvis Presley?" There's a pause there though, as if he hadn't been sure.

Peridot (836) has posed:
    As Peridot steps into the air-pod robonoid, she pauses at the entryway, stopping to look at Lapis with squinted eyes. "What did I tell you about drawing weird faces on my robonoids!?" She pointed at the drawing. "Robonoids are not toys! They are sophisticated machines. Do you know how hard this stuff is to wash off?" She ask, scratching at the face with her fingertip and only succeeding in smudging it before giving up with a sigh.

    Once inside, she turns leans her weight on the open doorway. Regarding the blonde holoman. Her expression seemed impatient and sour, though not entirely directed at the avatar. "Listen... We have a job to do. Just back away, and live out your short meaningless little life; and stay out of our way." She tapped the wall on the interior, a small glowing button depressing and the orb began to close up once more, levitating itself into the sky.

Lapis Lazuli (849) has posed:
    Lapis just giggles in response, "So stop trying to wash them off! It's only that one!" She climbs fully into the pod herself against the pile of toys. It's a bit of a cramped space, as the pod itself isn't very large. A couple of the boxes and boxes are moved around to make some extra room, and the Elvis robonoid climbs into Lapis' lap. When she next looks back over to the opening, Blurr is there.

    She seems surprised for a moment and says back, "It's the King. You wouldn't understand, just leave us alone."

Blurr has posed:
    Even as the doors closes, the avatar just lets itself in, settling down against the wall. "The King? Do you mean like an actual, literal king as in monarch king like a ruler or something else entirely?" he presses further, ignoring their requests to leave them alone.

    He chuckles at the drawing on the robonoid. "It's pretty good, if I do say so myself. You're quite the artist." he comments to Lapis, while searching the pod for its navigation systems. It's got to have some kind of control array, right? Or if it's remotely controlled, it must have something that receives a signal from wherever the commands are coming from.

    Outside, the car, which is Blurr's -actual- form, begins to trailing the pod from the ground. Once it reaches a certain altitude though, he will activate his orbital bounce recall and return to his own ship, from which he can continue following them hopefully without being noticed. Still, the teleport will mean an interruption in the holomatter emitter beam. So when the time comes, hopefully the two will be distracted enough not to notice.

Peridot (836) has posed:
    There appears to be controls. However, gem technology has a rather alien appearance, perhaps even to other aliens. The tech is nothing like human technology save for the some cosmetic appearances optimized for humanoid operation. There doesn't seem to be any circuitry. All the buttons and panels are holographic, and a liquid crystalline gel pumps through a yellow tube into the main hub. It's all crystal, liquids, light and energy.

    One thing is clear however, is that Peridot is the driver. She seems to be controlling the ship via the holopad that her fingers interlocked to create the frame for. Noticing the stowaway, and the speed at which he welcomed himself onto the ship. "Hey!" She barked. "Get off my ship immediately!"

Lapis Lazuli (849) has posed:
    Lapis doesn't even bother replying as the pod door closes. That should be the end of the avatar, but then he just climbs right in before it closes. Her brows furrow and her expression sours immediately into anger. "What are you doing?!" She shouts, putting her hand into the yellow tube of goop. Her eyes fade opaque as lines of cryptic text flood over her eyes. It's the first time Peridot's ever likely seen Lapis take control of one of the ships, much less integrate with one. The door behind the avatar opens up, and Lapis withdraws her hand.

    "Let's go." The puppy backpack is dropped behind her as she stands up fully, skirt flapping with the sudden air-rush into the pod. She immediately makes to grab the avatar and push him out of the pod, even if it means pushing herself out as well.

Blurr has posed:
    Blurr has made note of all of this, filing the information away for later use and likely a report to the Union afterward. Holopanels, sure, that's not too unusual. That weird gel stuff, though...he definitely noticed the text in Lapis' eyes as she plunged her hand into the strange liquid in the tube.

    "-Make- me." The 'man' taunts at Peridot's demands. "Hey, I tried to be nice!" He says, throwing his arms into the air in an exasperated fashion. "But fine, you wanna play rough, I guess we can play r--!" But he is cut off as the emitter beam is momentarily interrupted when the Autobot orbital jumps from the surface to his own ship. The holomatter flickers and disappears, right as Lapis tries to push him out of the pod. Well, there goes the human facade, because this is clearly no human.

    For the moment, he's nowhere to be seen...yet. But he is truly gone? If Peridot's ship has a sensor array of any sort, it might have picked up a blip of an unindentified vessel tailing them from a few miles back. It's in an upper layer of the atmosphere, almost sub-orbital altitude, but if the their systems can detect it, there's no question about that fact that it's following them.

Peridot (836) has posed:
    "Huh?" Perdidots brows press down as the image flickers, until comprehension dawns on her face. She was after all, a frequent user of the same trick. Her finger shot out grabbing the tail of her dress to keep the gem from toppling out the door, some invisible energy tethering her to the end of Peridot's arm. "Ugh." She groaned. If one thing was true, Peridot consistently under estimated humanity's intelligence- so the use of technology she was not accustomed to them using, it had yet to not work. "It's a holo-image!" She said. "It's got to be transmitting from-" She had barely time to finish asking the question much less search for the answer, before she noticed the blip on her radar.

    "There?" She asked out loud as the indicator began beeping. "Robonoids!" She said out loud. Embedded orbs in the wall of their ship rolling onto the ground of the ship and unfurling their robotic spider legs. Her minions responded to her voice by standing at attention. A small hole opens up in the wall of the vessel, and a cluster of the crab-sized roll out of the vessel. "Scan and identify."

Lapis Lazuli (849) has posed:
    Lapis gapss in surprise as she falls right through the avatar as if it weren't even there. She tries to stop herself, tipping on her tip-toes at the edge of the ship opening before being caught by Peridot. As soon as she has her balance back, she steps backwards into the pod. With the change in air pressure between the pod and the ambient atmosphere, a couple comicbooks get sucked out.

    In panic, Lapis shouts, "No!" That was all their hard work to even /find/ a place that had these things. They searched so hard for the items that Steven needed. She glances back at Peridot for a moment, and then steps back out of the pod and off the edge. Immediately she starts falling. Water begins to form on her back into wings as she darts down after the books. They're not getting away.

Blurr has posed:
    The scans from the robonoids don't return much due to a very low radar profile, but they do reveal that the ship trailing them is a Cybertronian stealth vessel belonging to the Autobots--a faction aligned with the Union. If the gem ladies didn't already know, according to the public databases, Cybertronians are a race of sentient machines, like AIs advanced enough to be alive. They're good at fighting, and destroying things, and blending in with the environment despite their size. Hence that tricky little holographic disguise. Suddenly, the blip accelerates, closing the distance between itself and the pod to about half a mile.

    Speaking of the holoimage, it's back again. The 'teen' is now standing near that hub he'd seen the gel pumping into, and, as he'd seen Lapis do, the avatar attempts to phase its hand into the tube right where it enters the hub in an attempt to get into their systems and get as much information as he possibly can. A risky move, sure, since he's far from being composed of the same material they are, but Blurr has never really been the type to think a whole lot before he acts. He figures, he's tried crazier things before.

Peridot (836) has posed:
    "Lapis!" Peridot shouted after her. Though she was aware of her water wings. It was still a pain to have her outside the ship-- all for something she was having a difficult time quantifying the value of to begin with. She began pouring over the data fed to her holopad as her robonoids sent the results of their various scans, some more fruitless than others. She hadn't had much dealing with the union, or even autobots. Her mind was rapidly racing through scenarios to deal with the situation when she got another important notice. Lapis would have to fend for herself for the moment. Someone was attempting to access her precious machinery.

    If he were any other manner of being, he probably would not have been able to interface with the datapad at all. But the combination of his mechanical mind, his holoimage of light and energy which wasn't entirely unlike Peridot's and Lapis's bodies- save for their mass and weight. The combination seemed to grant him some manner of connection with the alien machine. Much like Lapis, his eyes would immedaitely glow with bright blue color, with streams of data racing through his vision. Most found the experience a pleasant one- he was taking his first step into a strange world. The tech was dream-like. Magical, yet somehow scientifically advanced. His head was flooded with imagery, he could control the ship if he chose. He could see what the gems were. Polymorphic sentient space rocks with holographic bodies.
    He was just beginning to fully understand the controls, and see glimpses of what Gems did. They were planet conquerors. But before he could glean much more useful information, the pleasant flood of light that had filled his vision suddenly become venomous and painful. He had stepped into the digital domain of gem tech; and worse he had established a direct digital connection with Peridot; whom on the physical realm was somewhat weak relying on the strengths of others and her mechanical creations. but here she was the master of her domain on her home turf and a force to be reckoned with.
    
    "Get off my ship!" came the bellowing howl in Peridot's shrill voice, much louder than she could have mustered in person. She attacked Blurr's mind with a jolt of power, trying to slam him with a digital fist to overload his circuitry.

Lapis Lazuli (849) has posed:
    As the wind whips against Lapis, she accelerates faster through the air, making her body like a dart as she sails towards the waywards comic books flapping against the wind. When she finally reaches them, she snatches them out of the air and expands her wings rapidly. She sails at a quick rate to level altitude and begins slowly flapping those wings of her. Obviously there's more to her flight than actual aerodynamics, it likely ties in with her ability to actually levitate water itself, because she quickly begins gaining altitude again. She doesn't quite know about the struggle happening aboard the ship, but it will take her a moment to catch up.

Blurr has posed:
    Blurr is pleasantly surprised when he encounters almost no resistance at all in inserting himself into their network. Interesting, if this had been any other kind of circuitry-based system, like the ones on Cybertron or even on Earth, he wouldn't have been able to use the holomatter to interface with it directly like that. And without Lapis, he wouldn't have even -realized- it was possible! It's certainly not something he's ever encountered before. Thank you Lapis!

    He sees that they are actually quite advanced technologically, at least compared to humans anyway. So why the human toys? These items appear to be commonplace things, why couldn't they get stuff similar or even better than that stuff on their own home planet? Why do they go to such lengths to get their hands on it? Blurr was searching for this information when Peridot suddenly assaults his mind. This certainly was her turf, and Blurr wasn't exactly in a position to even use the full force of his own digital defenses. Too bad Black Arachnia wasn't here, she'd be great at this. But...perhaps another time.

    The holoavatar pulls out of the system and dematerializes once more, disappearing from the pod. But not without leaving behind a nasty little surprise in the form of malicious code that will continue to datamine and relay back to the Autobot's ship through subspace channels if not removed. Once found however, it shouldn't be too difficult to neutralize.

    This time, once the avatar is gone, the other ship takes off, quickly zooming out of range of Peridot's sensor arrays.

    Oh, and there's one more little thing he left. A message pops up on the pod's comm systems. It reads:

    "Tell the blue girl thanks for showing me around!"
    -Blurr.

Peridot (836) has posed:
    Peridot growls and waves her hand in a wild motion, dispelling the text of the screen. She briefly looked to a hidden panel on the board and even began reaching for it when she realized her attack had at least been effective and dispelled the illusionary image. She also noticed the blip beginning to fall away and Lapis returning to the ship.

    She tapped the screen and opened up a door as Lapis drew closer. "Hurry it up and get in!" She shouted over the wind.

Lapis Lazuli (849) has posed:
    As Lapis flies up to the pod, she ducks in neatly with her wings disappearing just as fast as they appeared. With the door closed behind her, she releases the comic books back on to the floor, sighing. Without everything they had gathered, the mission just wouldn't have been as successful. When she looks around, even, it appears the threat is out of the pod, too. Was it a complete success? She looks at Peridot for a moment, as if to ask 'What happened?' but she doesn't, and instead sits back on the floor of the pod, smoothing out her skirt. Back to the ship.