| Scene Listing | || | Scene Schedule | || | Scene Schedule RSS |
| Owner | Pose |
|---|---|
| Starbound Flotilla | Getting into Cy is easy. Wash in with the tides where the Great Ocean meets the Cyber Core at a particular archipelago, wash in with the rest of the resources that keep this city's hungry maw alive and then wash out with the rest of the filth it creates. This awful city, drenched in pollution and greed, where will, spirit, and biomass go in, and trash comes out. Unlike the rest of Cy, South Central is tougher to get into. Personal vehicles have to get through an anti-air anti-armor defensive screen at the southwest border. A taxi ride costs a hell of a lot too, but you've had it prepaid by your anonymous benefactor. Was it Y/N? No, seems it was the hacker, whose neon-rainbow decayed-skull icon is all over the interior screens, whether those are the taxis', or of especially stealthy vehicles one might bring. And South Central, at least, is well-lit, bright, shiny, crowned in neon and holo-shimmering crystal. Here, a coffin apartment is more than most make in ten lifetimes. You get it through connections only. "DaneXAAX38020" is the randomly-generated username your benefactor has chosen right now. "Just call me Dane, though," or so he said in the voice-chat he hosts between the hacked auto-taxis. He speaks with a heavy voice obfuscator, and the patterns on the screens undulate nauseatingly. "You're the ones Y/N found? Whatever. Look, gonna admit my memory situation means I can't guarantee all these details. But me, some of the boys I worked with at (2d12 <4> <5>) Utga Labs back before the (1d20 <4>) test subject *thing*, we all worked here, and if those fucks are trying to trace my boys, they can trace a bullet. I hate to leave a place we had in *central*, but fuck getting IDed and having my throat slit by fucking GMT security, no way. Least I can do is go out in a blaze of glory against something like UCS." Out the window of the taxis, through the heavy storm of (1d12 <8>) radioactive dust from the exclusion zone northeast, (1d100 <54>) a clean, elegant white subway entrance has dozens of bodybags piling up at its entrance, yuppies and hedge-fund cubicle workers and security who didn't figure out that it's *lethally* dense down there. One way or another, everyone can reach the base of the condo building, with its pretentions of being old, well-worn concrete and steel. It was built a few years ago, and it'll be gone in a few. No ornate decorations change its insubstantiality, especially given the upcoming fireworks. There are open windows, an internal staircase, an internal elevator, even roof access to head down through. Plenty of options. "Figure how you're gonna get in." Says the voice of Dane. "That part's not my job. Don't stand around too much, these guys like to call UCS on anyone who isn't wearing a current-season business suit." |
| Isaac Beaufort | Some might see this city as something other than a disgusting dystopian future, but not Isaac. He cringes at what he sees and looks disgusted the more and more he sees of it. He tries to control his body language though, right now focuses on what he can do. The fact that people were going after former workers over an incident that happened to them was awful. He's going the route of the hacked taxis and listens as everything is displayed, including looking out into the city's streets to see what isn't said. He takes a breath, and when things come to the building itself, he steps out placing a suit coat over his shoulders. Isaac is a rather broad young man, and surprisingly well-built, but hides it beneath his business casual outfit. He walks inside and looks for the elevator/stairs to go to where the condo. He simply acts as if he belongs here. His goal is to just hide in plain sight, and make his way to the condo to do things there. |
| Kale Hearthward | Mercenary work isn't *really* Kale's jam, outside of needing to do it as part of various cover identities he's incubating for various purposes. But, still, he does need to clear this debt. Paladins' paychecks and expense accounts don't cover everything, and he's had... a lot of things he's been wanting to buy. The clothing for the tournament entry fee and the maid dresses are only like, half of it. When Kale exits the taxi, he's looking like he belongs there. Suit and briefcase, matching the local fashions nearly flawlessly, and a briefcase to go along with it. He doesn't even pay attention to whoever might be at the condo entrances - he just disinterestedly checks his watch as he goes up the stairs. Part of acting like you belong is, in fact, acting. |
| KNK | One of those taxis opens up to let Nephra out, and the door stays open for longer than strictly necessary. There's hardly even a dusty perturbation that could be observed at close range to determine that a pair of ninjas are invisibly following her, and their communication is over secure, low-power radio. "However you want to handle it. We'll go up top and drop down in from there. Maybe make some noise down here where it's obvious, first." Rose's on-a-mission tones are crisp and clear. "Let us know if you're in trouble, okay? We can get down again fast!" Violet, by contrast, is as flowing and untroubled as ever. "Getting out again's always priority one." Scaling straight up the side, even under the watchful eye of air defenses, is what they head straight for, sticking to the outside steel and moving quickly around any window with activity. Once they find the roof access, Violet pops the knives out of her wrists to carve a way inside that doesn't even touch the lock. |
| DRYCLEAN-SIGINT | DRYCLEAN took the taxi; something else took the scenic route up high. Both are guessing that the screen has only middling anti-orbital capabilities. Luckily, they're pretty good at guessing; at least, that's what they say. A sharper wave of static interest washes through the participants devices; audio I/O gently overlayed. As they step out of the vehicle, greatsword tastefully hidden under their jacket, it continues to flow even further; a gentle wash at devices within the condo, checking walls, doors, unsecured nodes at the periphery. Interior mapping. Information is warfare, after all. Miles above, something begins to align; communications lasers beginning to overlap. Unseen for now, but the party starting will be just a bit more colorful. They stand, blatantly suspicious, at the curb. As one does. |
| Ophrys | Emerging from Isaac's taxi after he departs is-- an entirely ordinary businesswoman. Her suit is snappy and current, the latest seasonal fashion. Her face is obscured by a breathing mask, a precaution against the oncoming radioactive storm. White hair in a short, fanned ponytail and with two long bits that start near her temples and arc up and back like antennae. Reaching up, she adjusts her underframe glasses, glancing up the building facade. When she enters, she just walks past the guards like she belongs here. After all-- she does. She walks the corpo walk, she wears the corpo wear, and by ignoring those clearly Beneath her she talks the corpo talk. Heels click on the tile floor as she approaches the elevator bank, "The correct floor if you will, Mister Beau." By insisting Isaac is accompanying her, that should throw any suspicion off him as well. But she also doesn't use his actual name. |
| Nephra Tangent | Big cities and washed-out neon are a comforting backdrop for the joyous outing of cleaning out a condo, loud-style. Nephra only pays just enough attention at the taxi screen spiel to remember 'Dane', 'protect people's cover', and 'be loud'. That's most of what matters, anyway. She's muscle and noise. Nephra pressed herself against the window of the car, keeping an eye on the passed-through streets until the unassuming target tower is right outside. She gets out of the vehicle, all wrapped up in the armor of her raincoat, and not yet the actual armor of her combat suit, and finds herself rocking back and forth on her heels, trying to act natural and not look back at the still-emptying taxi and looking up at the towering skyscraper in front of them. If it'll be gone in a few years, at least they're all just speeding it along, to take one room out. Going in to find the stairs seems like the best approach, straight-forward and clunky, so that's what she does, hoping everyone else who bothers with things like 'planning' has already done so. Haha. |
| Reyes | Reyes isn't quite sure how a situation like this ended up linked to Paladin ops and debts, but a closer look is sure worth it. He arrives in... well, power armor. Heavy-duty, blocky power armor with an industrial paint scheme, covered in tools and with liquid tanks built into the back of its legs. Perfectly normal thing to be running around in for a maintenance worker in these parts, right? Well, Reyes isn't sure, but he's doing his best to fake it. Because after getting out he pulls out what looks like a clipboard and a data tablet and strolls towards the building, tromping for its external utility linkups - power, communications, anything he can find... |
| Futaba Nuki | Futaba is most certainly not going to wash into Cy, especially with so much pollution and crap floating about in the waters leading to the city. Flying normally wouldn't be much better, either, considering what might actually be in the skies. Instead, she takes full advantage of the mysterious benefactor's taxi ride, conveniently shrinking herself to the size of a teacup in order to make it an easier fit for everyone else that's taking a ride to South Central. Plus, it's just interesting people-watching from inside a cup holder. It's a little jarring hearing Dane coming from the screens at first, but she gets used to it fairly quickly while taking in all that info about the job. Getting into the condo should be just as easy, too, especially with Futaba's skillset. Following those heading for the front like they belong, she stays at her miniscule size while turning herself into a ~~corn cob~~ fly (with somewhat conspicuous leafy wings and a golden ringed torso) before heading right for the front doors, looking for a way further up as quickly as possible to try and get a good lay of the land if the land was a building that needed demolishing and burning in short order. |
| Starbound Flotilla | Heading through the lobby in a social way isn't tough, but it's a little weird. The local fashions are... distorted, and the group matching them going to find them odd. This season's fashion (for the week) is (1d100 <5>) Beastiecore, which involves finding and securing authentic (or authentic-looking) extinct animal skulls to cufflinks, tiepins, and other suchlike. But matching it isn't too hard. Isaac and Ophrys have to move fast, Kale has to violate just a little bit of veganism. Or at least do some convincing 3D-printing. Is a 3D-printed animal skull printed from archival scans vegan or not? They can make it to the front door of the target apartment, at least. |
| Isaac Beaufort | Isaac tilts his head to Ophys, and responds to her in a servile fashion. "Ma'am," he says, and of course is more than willing to lead the way. He does move quickly with her, however, noticing the odd fashion of the people here. Really? Animal skulls..? They were one step away from ratbro ytubers! This world really /is/ awful. Once at the door, he puts an ear to it and listens to make sure nobody is inside. If there is, he pauses and indicates it for Ophys. If not, he attempts to open up the door unless stopped by his fellow Concordian. |
| Starbound Flotilla | The KNK duo can ascend decently easily. The roof security is limited to a small group of (1d3 <2>) flyer drones. This building has a subscription to a Bronze-Grade UCS Security Package, meaning they've subcontracted out a company to run small flying robots that patrol nearby. She can get to the front door of the residence via slicing the door, or even into things like vents, if she can avoid the sweeping spotlights, or kill them subtly. |
| Kale Hearthward | Ugh, the local styles here... Kale knows he shouldn't pass judgement, but he passes judgement anyway. Right. There's the door. Kale stands back, letting Isaac and Ophys handle the breach, at least for now... |
| Father Berislav | Dirty sprawl glides past a priest seated in the back of a taxi. Hands folded politely in his lap, he wears, aside from a cassock, a concerned frown. His silver eyes don't lack for things to rest unfavorably upon--whether it's the fortifications at the border of the city's southwest corner, or the outrageous uptick of the fare on the electronic dashboard, on the other side of the protective screen which separates him from the driver. The neon-skull which flickers on that screen is reassurance that the priest won't have to pay it. "Dane it is," he says to the obscured voice. He doesn't answer, if he's the one that was found. Looking out and into the walled opulence of this quarter, the priest's frown is cast in colorful neon, through the storm and the taxi's window. Rates for claustrophobic apartments are proudly advertised above the intersection at which the taxi waits for a light. Berislav's index finger's twitch and curl in his lap, when he looks up at one such advertisement--and the asterisk below. Even the squalor here is gilded and gated. The condo awaits. He relaxes his hands, not realizing he'd balled them into fists since the taxi had passed the subway. >Figure out how you're gonna get in. These guys like to call UCS on anyone not wearing a current-season business suit. "Of course they do," the priest sighs. He reaches up and taps his index to his ear, standing on the street corner. A few calls are made to Watch sympathizers in the area--seeing if there are any who work maintenance here. If so, he'll ask for conventiently open doors, elevators and left-out tool carts to form a path to the condo that should frustrate any attempts to follow him by would-be investigators, on the payroll or otherwise. |
| KNK | There still appears to be no one on the roof. "Alright, let's do this quietly. Wait ten for cover." says Rose, passively scanning for wireless traffic. "Roger-roger." says Violet, imitating a movie character whose name she's already forgotten. Violet moves into position first, heading toward the door but then diverting as she spots the vents. The patrol pattern is something Rose takes a few seconds to analyze, then aims a hack at one of the flyer drones. Nothing substantial -- she just messes with its navigation enough to push its patrol path off course for one loop. With the huge gap in coverage that makes, neither drone will be in position to spot the extremely suspicious sight of a vent popping open and 'nothing at all' slipping inside. |
| Ophrys | The beauty of GhostWare is that the disguise Ophrys wears is easily modified, being entirely projected holographic camouflage. Waiting on the elevator, she adjusts a cuff, jingling the rodent skulls affixed to silver cufflinks. The tie clip itself is fashioned from a tiny caimen's head, 'biting' the tie in place. Once traversed Legitimately to the correct floor and Isaac checks the door, she holds up a finger when he looks at her. She sends out a pulse through the building's electronics, targetting cameras not just in the hallway but searching out cameras behind the door. Each camera she finds, she freezes the image and then forces it into a repeating picture loop. She makes a request of DRYCLEAN, then verifies she's covered the video and audio feeds. Once satisfied, she steps aside and gestures to the door. No words are said that might alert anyone inside but the meaning is quite clear to both Isaac and Kale. |
| Starbound Flotilla | It takes about forty five seconds before a nosey bastard somewhere next door calls something in to the SecOps about DRYCLEAN, saying they're Just Worried about someone maybe Dealing The Drugs Nearby, which is code for "get this fucking poor off my streets". But they're currently on the automated voice menu about it for a little. Efforts to hack provoke a *strange* understanding of things. Almost everything here is networked. The Internet of Things means that everything, *everything*, seems to have a network. Doors, door locks, door peepholes, elevators, most windows, almost every light, every nearby car... It's almost too much to comprehend, but it's at least enough to map. The difficulty for hackers isn't breaching things, it's making sense of the sheer amount of options. One can get a map, but a scan of the interior of the target space will need a moment to figure out which of the ten thousand security cameras is which. (1d20 <14>) Another, unrelated hacktivist collective is publishing doxx for middle managers from Utga Labs in this local network, in revenge for some kind of human experimentation scandal. |
| Starbound Flotilla | Heading through the lobby and to stairs means that less eyes are on Nephra. She finds herself in the access points used by maintenance folks. (3d10 <6> <4> <5>) Weirdly, back here, there's huge volumes of projection equipment, and the walls seem startlingly thin...? It might be possible to comprehend this with better perspective. Itcan get near the right hall, though it'll mean smashing or slicing a door to get to the hall (and then, of course, to get inside). |
| Starbound Flotilla | What Reyes finds in his search is roughly what you'd expect from the internet-of-things layout. Most of the networking is chaotic wireless, most of the power and communications are buried under ten layers of facade. Hell to maintain. There's not much one can do about flies around here. Really, if it weren't winter, there'd be a bunch of bugs to blend in with. As it stands, nobody seems to care about Futaba on her way to the interior. Duplicated rooms and hallways... it's all the same, over and over. Like they 3D-printed a building. |
| Nephra Tangent | Nephra is, for once, thankful to not yet have the eyes of a judging crowd on her. Musty maintenance halways are much more comfortable, even if they're filled with odd gear. Her best guess, some sort of puppetshow-esque tech, but her best guess sure isn't a good one. Her footsteps are ever so slightly louder than they should be, against the backdrop of strange thin walls. Relying less on her real eye and more on her prosthetic analog, a click-clicking comes with rotating lenses, mapping out structural density of the passage. Smashing inside should be no issue- and as her metal suit slides itself over her skin beneath her coat, she sets out to do just that. Find a weak spot, insert fist quickly, repeat until there's enough of an opening to slip through. Easy-peasy drywall-squeezie. |
| Futaba Nuki | The local fashion doesn't bother Futaba too much. She's seen plenty of animal skulls before, albeit of more common animals than some on display here, but it'd be easy enough to fake if she wasn't fluttering around as a fly instead of just showing up. While Ophrys goes for the door, Fly-Futaba sidles up against it and signals... Something to the crew up front. It's not really clear what she's doing because she's got fly hands. Whatever it is, though, she bides her time, then flies right on the moment it opens. What gets her somewhat confused right at the start, though, are all those similar-looking doorways, hallways, and walkways that end up making things look a little too similar for her to get a clear idea of which way she's going by the time she traverses down the third hallway. At least seeing all of this should make it easier to actually know where to hit once it's time to get to breaking things. Up is generally a good direction to move in for that, so she looks for the nearest vent in order to fly on in and start seeking a way towards the roof. Although she hasn't worked with Rose and Violet before, she's guessing they might need that extra bit of muscle. <J-IC-Scene> Futaba Nuki says, "Oh geez, this place is... Everything looks so samey here. I'm just gonna go up until I can't any more!" |
| DRYCLEAN-SIGINT | A leather greatcoat blows in the irradiated breeze. A bit more fitting within the slums; but even then, the almost grossly understated design is practically blinding amidst any modern fashion trends. They blatantly loiter on a less-lit side of the building; hands tap along the edges of sleeves, reaching up to adjust misaligned antennae every few seconds. An eye kept on the exterior; an ear subsumed through the walls. <J-IC-Scene> Ophrys says, "Kindly isolate any outbound communications other than our own, if you would please. In case anyone attempts to call in their friends. It is about to get quite loud in here." Let's work with that. White noise dots the digital landscape. The SecOps call clicks to response; an Operator is on the line, but not the one that is anticipated, as a third party hijacks the communication. A voice, cohesive but underlayed with static, responds that a force is on the way, thank you for calling. The accent is wrong; but of course, people don't check that. The rest of their response goes unheard by those that could make a difference. ... Above, a watchful eye reaches down and grabs communications from the condo building. Forced encryption; signal redirection. Network maps begin to contort even further, choked into a shape more convenient to someone aiming for I/O control to the block. Everything starts to funnel through a hovering relay miles up - - and with a hiss, outgoing wireless communications from the building begin to be silenced. The comms blackout is obvious from the outside, to anyone checking for regular networking heartbeats; we'll just have to deal with that later. |
| Reyes | Reyes has sidled up against the building, having found the best spot where power junctions and communications trunks enter, and reached out with his mind from there to locate several machines within walls. Power transformers, digital monitors and circuit breakers, network switches... anything and everything that serves as some kind of trunk or hub leading to the outside world, he reaches out with his mind to locate, hands pressed against the building. "Hrrrrrnghhhhh..." And, with all of his will, he begins to focus, his thoughts reaching out like a vicegrip to clamp down on all of them. SHUTDOWN, SHUTDOWN, SHUTDOWN, SHUTDOWN. A forced trip of the power supplies and any backup power, forcing devices to offline themselves, freeze up, or simply cut their power as appropriate. His will sweeps through like a wave out to maximum range targeting one thing after another, in an attempt to knock the whole building's power and networking offline... or at least into UTTER CHAOS. |
| Starbound Flotilla | There are a truly unbelievable number of Watch sympathizers in Cy. Genuinely wild. Berislav finds his opportunities. It brings him easily up to where the others are, and helps him guide those in the stairs. The breach is prepared at the STAIRS by Nephra. In the VENTS, Futaba and KNK can make an easy path to the condo. Ophrys has an easier time localizing things to maybe the nearest ten cameras. Reyes taking a spammy approach runs into little resistance for a while as well. But that doesn't last long. (1d20 <9>) Suddenly, for no clear reason, commands issued to the network start getting duplicated, a dozen, a hundred, sometimes a thousand times. Every shutdown is a startup is a shutdown again. Every blocked line of wireless communication is ten thousand blocked lines. Cameras start all showing the same loop. Digital maintenance scrambles to put out the virtual equivalent of a fire. Within, all the lights have gone dark. Fans within vents shudder, jolting back and forth. And, in the target condo, shimmering lights flicker rapidly. And yet, even still, violence is chosen. The door opens. It's already unlocked, security got here first. (1d10 <10> + 10 = 20) At least a dozen men from a corporate strike team, shining red optics in the dark suddenly fixing on the door, interrupted in their crime-scene-style examination of the room. They're visible from the vents, and ambush-able from the side entrance Nephra is about to make. But something is wrong. Something is *terribly* wrong. (3d10 <6> <4> <5>) A competing wireless signal screams towards a lot of PROJECTION EQUIPMENT in the walls, on the ceiling, in those maintenance areas... all displaying the most horrible, bright, wild patterns against every wall at once. Nephra discovers, all too late in the windup, that the walls are somehow paper-thin, a thousand times worse than drywall. The STAIRS BREACH GROUP and the VENT BREACH GROUP have a flanking position, from above and from the side, but they have to deal with the sudden, eye-searing pattern-blast from the walls, and its disorientation. Meanwhile, the DOOR BREACH GROUP has drawn the attention (and instant heavy gunfire) of something like a dozen men in sleek black armor and tactical silenced SMGs, even though they're only getting a fraction of the patterns. Every surface in the building starts to flicker, like a bad projectionist's work at a movie theater. Concrete starts to blur and refocus. Wood paneling flickers between stone, dirt, grass... |
| Isaac Beaufort | Gunfire aims out from those inside without even a word. That was more than enough incentive for Isaac. He covers the door with his bulk to make sure Ophrys is protected. The bullets, however, do little more than collide with the wall of meat that is Isaac. Those that somehow /do/ find purchase in his body are slowly pushed out as his body heals. Above him, Frankenstein's monster appears, channeling protective power into Isaac as he bursts into motion. He runs towards the nearest piece of furniture, and then towards the nearest Gunner. He swings in a massive strike, aiming to bat him to one side of the apartment as he looks towards the next one. The persona above him's eyes crackle with Promethean flame as he starts advancing again, like a horror movie monster. |
| Ophrys | The building, instead of going dark, has the architectural equivilent of a seizure. Ophrys' jaw sets with a little noise that might just be escaping breath. Isaac becomes Meatshieldsaac, giving her enough time to restructure the breaching plan. This isn't the surprising advantage she ordered, but she'll have to make it work. Isaac charges into the room and she calls out, "Mister Beau, caution left!" The fingers on her right hand spread out and hook like claws. Lines arc between them, forming a gleaming red magic circle projecting between her fingertips. A scarlet sphere materializes and she lobs it as one would lob a hand grenade. The holographic disguise remains in place, juxtaposed against her producing a bullpup SMG out from behind her back to cover Isaac from the door while staying out of his way and keeping the floor clear for others. |
| Futaba Nuki | Up, up, sideways sometimes, and following the ninja from the Watch: An easy enough strategy for Fly-Futaba as she continues struggling with what direction she's even supposed to be heading in.She's so focused on them, though, that she's caught off guard by the sudden attack on her eyes, reeling and holding her position for a moment to get her bearings straight. In that time, she hears bullest, and she starts seeing people moving below her outside the vents. Isaac's already bringing out his Persona (which has Futaba gawking for a bit, of course), and Rose calls out the smoke. DRYCLEAN confirms that it's time to get loud, and get loud Futaba does. Mostly, by bursting out of the vent from above the kill squad as a roaring gorilla. She doesn't sound anything like a gorilla, though, but like someone badly imitating a gorilla's noises, and there's also a rather noticeable leaf stuck right to her forehead along with a gold bracelet around her arm, but other than that? The angry gorilla starts rampaging at those men in black, rushing at them with her arms swinging wildly at them and even stretching sometimes to close gaps that she shouldn't be able to from a distance. And just to make matters even worse... Said gorilla is also swinging around a flaming katana, lashing out at both armored men and paper-thin walls alike. The benefactor did mention burning the place, so Futaba's taking that literally! The horrid wallpaper imagery is making it somewhat difficult to aim, but aiming at the armored squad might be a little easier to do by picking out those that aren't garishly colored. |
| DRYCLEAN-SIGINT | If DRYCLEAN had ever had the proclivity to frown, the may have done so here. Yet, their monitors just keep running that audio visualizer, shining dimly through the radioactive haze of the exterior. They shift to tapping the blade of their sword instead, though, a quiet crystal harmony underpinning the static they passively emit. An internal signal has breached the static harmony they've been maintaining. Signal-noise that dissonant, and from so many locations, begs to be triangulated - and luckily, they're a specialist. Positions noted, comprehended, tracked. They'll know the location of the source. After all, no point in not greeting whatever mystery fella's running this bit of the show, right? ... Another influence, then, starts reaching down and attempting to break things. The immense feedback loop is carefully channeled, pushed, and routed over the signal to projectors as the BREACH TEAM encounters them - eye-sear crushed down into visual static, internals struggling to keep up with increased data load. If the projectors can melt down from overuse, they're going to start doing so very soon - but the lightshow is only marginally less disorienting until then. White noise is only growing louder through the assaulted condo, a persistent underpinning to the rattle of gunfire. It's not helping the migraines. |
| KNK | Unfortunate as it is, Violet doesn't have anything in her current gear that's good enough to let her fight with her eyes closed. Rose can filter it out, but the kind of high-speed action they're used to requires a higher degree of precision than is good for relying wholly on shared senses. "It's an attack." "And it's ugly, woah." Rose curses. "Dropping smoke." The vent comes up, and there's still nothing in there, but the short, stick-like grenades drop from nowhere and are scattered throughout the room. They show up well against the walls, and the investigators are free to shoot them if they feel like it. The contents are pressurized, and that'll release the smoke and thermal chaff all at once, instead of issuing in streams as happens otherwise. Violet drops into that mess, once the smoke has obscured the wall patterns. It's not like she can see through the smoke that well, either, but the last position of everyone in the room is highlighted in her eyes, and by the time she's close enough to her target, there's little hope of turning a gun on her before her sword has already completed its arc, its glow bright and violent even in these circumstances. There's no hesitation in her motion. There's no need for any, and no time for it. It's a dance she's done before. Still in the vents, Rose is unpacking the high-explosives. They'll need them in a moment, but she'd have a hard time setting them up with the room still guarded, smoke or no. Anyone else who makes it to the room gets the 'last position' data beamed to them from Rose, updated with flickering disappearances for each successful strike reported by Violet's hands. |
| Nephra Tangent | Nephra tries to blink. Keyword 'tries'. The wall shears at the lightest touch from her gauntlet's claws, and it's only up to her base reflex to stay steady on her feet. Before she even realizes it the world has become an utterly blinding hellscape, like staring at a flashbang that just doesn't burn itself out. She staggers forwards, mass and inertia fuddled by lack of occular horizon reference. She'd rather be blind than this. Folding her armored arms up over her face, and squinting her right eye closed, she relies only on the now-burning synthetic intake of light reception in her robotic one. It doesn't help much. Gunshots and burning whine of projectors are new noise, but the thud-thud of her reactor quickly joins it all, spooling gravity up around her feet to make sure no stray shot finds too close to her head for comfort. Charging through the room, she tries to make like her duty here- be a distraction. An ambush angle, from a torn-open exitway, she lets out a yell, nearly-blindly trying to tear through furniture and interior doorways, and knock armored guards around. Cause a ruckus, draw fire, be the muscle, break it down, down, down. Think later, it's showtime. |
| Father Berislav | Berislav offers Nephra a strained smile, motioning with an after-you sweep of his palm for her. When she breaches, the unanticipated thinness of the walls and the resultant burst of wild, eye-searing colors cause tears to brim in the corner of his eyes, flushing powdery worse-than-drywall and struggling in vain against nauseating neon bleed. He wheels around, back pressed to the wall, forearm pressed forcefully into his eyes to try and starve the searing colors. His free hand glows brightly from within, a burning, unreal orange that radiates outward, until his hand is nearly occluded by it. A heavy revolver with a barrel as long as his forearm rests in his grasp, pulled from whatever space that light occupies. As colors dance in his shut eyes, the silenced 'clack-clack-clack' of SMGs reaches his ears. How many? Hard to tell, with his eyes shut. He counts to three, takes a breath, and passes through the breach, enduring another second of disorienting pain to pass into blessed darkness. While spots dance in his eyes, flickering lights and muzzle flashes call out the adversary. Data from Rose fills in the missing spots. They're well paid professionals. Wait until they're already shooting in one of those controlled bursts, then-- Berislav vaults an expensive counter in the darkness, feet pushing off of it to push him into a dive across the living room. The others are coming in through the door. Four more muzzle flashes, in a terrifyingly fast span, the priest's form illuminated in strobe before he hits the ground and lands behind the couch. Hollow-point bullets, nearly the size of human fingers, seek out red optics with cold precision. Behind the couch, Berislav breaks open the revolver, fingers slotting in another four cartridges, the rims nearly the width of his thumb. |
| Starbound Flotilla | (1d20 <7>) This corporate killteam is startlingly hardy against Isaac's beatings. There's grunts of pain, but no crack of bone, just a wrenching sound of metal crunching weirdly. Cyborg skeletons? Downed, wounded, battered men struggle to inject things, trying to raise handguns to keep shooting. Ophrys is able to suppress them, though not fully finish them quite yet. Except for when her explosive goes off even while one of them struggles to get it out the window. THAT guy's cooked. As for the ones left outside of cover, blasting away at the door, they're driven into cover by Father Berislav's careful, tactical fire. (1d20 <9>) A helmet shatters, but others are simply blasted off their feet by the heavy wounding of a near-headshot. Seems they have heavily reinforced skulls too. "An *old mammal?!*" One manages to shout as a gorilla descends. Screaming with fear, (1d20 <1>) he draws a monofil-knife, barely "blocking" a strike, suffering massive bruising, enough to get an injection of something and dive headlong into a frantic knife/katana duel. KNK's smoke goes off, Rose dampening the effect significantly almost means Violet has an easier time understanding just what the hell is going on visually, and keeps the new bomb efforts covered. Luckily, she doesn't struggle too much, not with Nephra charging in. (1d20 <2>) While she shores up the tank end of things, she's going to have a hell of a time landing any shots. DRYCLEAN-SIGINT finds something awful. (1d20 <10>) Dane appears to be trying to keep up the projections. But based on how his signal is moving, it's *already* being diverted from somewhere else. So he's not trying to sabotage the team, but *someone* is manipulating him into doing so. Good luck getting a signal to him though. He struggles, but ultimately, can't stop from being locked out despite his best effort. The condo's flickering and patterns calm down, but static on walls is almost a different issue, innately. Too bright. But everyone's making progress, getting the advantage slowly... And the place is getting thoroughly wrecked by the tanks smashing around and the various bombs that have exploded or are exploding, at least. |
| Isaac Beaufort | Isaac /was/ holding back, in fear of hurting them too much...or killing them in horrible ways. He wanted to knock them out, but these men were /tough/. These were people made to hurt others, and the fact they drew weapons and fired without hesitation or mercy speaks volumes. He relaxes, even as shots still rain on him, the handguns doing very little. "You're no better than shadows..." he says, calmly. "What could have turned you into something this horrible? That you'd open fire without a second thought? That you'd kill without thinking? How many innocent people have you slayed..?" Static starts filling the room, and as Frankenstein's Monster starts to spark, that Promethean flame flows across its body. Isaac stares at the closest of the corporate cyborgs and then...he speaks a single word. "/Maziodyne/!" he speaks, and an array of storm clouds appear above each and every cyborg. Followed by a massive bolt of lightning crashing down, aiming to fry each one in turn. He's trying to draw their attention to him, as the largest threat even if there are other threats here. He has to protect his allies now, these are monsters. Monsters are threats to people. |
| KNK | Facing other cyborgs almost makes things easier for Violet. It's not just that her high-frequency blade is made for the kinds of opponents that are built 'like her, but tougher,' but that her eyes automatically gain overlays computing the weaknesses of power supply lines going through limbs, vulnerable joints, inner-body batteries and generators, and her arms know to automatically follow the lines and find where to cut in a contrasting, deep orange glow. These are the kinds she's used to. Bigger, stronger, tougher, but rarely as flexible, and never as fast. She goes in low, slips around, stabs and darts away. She barely seems to exist for discernible time in any position that isn't immediately following a strike or dash, the action itself visible only by the streaking afterglow. Rose isn't waiting any longer to drop down and begin placing the explosives, starting from the area near the door, away from where the corporate security team has been pushed. "You'll have bomb data as it's placed. No kill like overkill and all that, but quality doesn't come cheap, so I'd rather not waste 'em. Client wants complete destruction, that's what they get. Don't expect the floors above or below to be safe." She slaps each rod in place according to a plan already memorized in her head. It's okay to be off by a little bit. As long as reach of these unassuming, forearm-sized canisters goes off, every surface in the room will be thoroughly ashed before the walls, roof and ceiling are blown away. She won't let them so much as analyze the wreckage. Depending on how the building is constructed, this could destroy more than just the one floor, and it certainly won't be safe to be within three floors of it happening. |
| Nephra Tangent | Light bouncing off smoke and walls to make the inside as staticky as the faux occular nerve Nephra's watching it all through feels, there's really only one choice to try and deal with next. Bringing fists to a gunfight is rarely a good idea, but at least she wouldn't be getting much use out of a gun, anyways. She throws a quick two-finger salute to the efforts of Father Berislav- he's managing, the tempo's seemingly enough in their wheelhouse, so it's time for her to shift courses. Disruption's one task that takes muscle, but counterdisruption seems more important right now. She rushes to find the nearest corpo guard, bullets and motions straying into the near-radius of her yanked downward and out of the air with violent acceleration, an intangible safeguard to her step- and her armor its own barrier beyond that. It's simple, really. She can handle two problems at the same time. Grab a guard, pick them up and throw them at the nearest paper-thin wall. Follow through on the throw, then follow them through the literal way, and try to smash their too-hard exoskeletal-armored bodies into the blinding arrays of projectors. If technological might isn't taking the brightness down, brute force is the next best option. Smiling enough to push some of the struggle aside, she tries to carry out just that. |
| Ophrys | Ophrys ducks back behind the doorframe when gunfire is returned her way, checking the magazine on her weapon. Deeming that to be 'enough' ammunition spent, she tucks the SMG behind her back where it disappears. The woman, too, melts out of sight. Against a backdrop of static-covered wall panels, smoke, and flickering lights, the oily outline of a humanoid shape should be easy to miss. More people are joining the firefight, and so Ophrys has changed her objective. Rose and Violet have explosives on lock, and with everyone else running interference... The cyborg's goal is data. Specifically computers, decoupled from networks, secure from hackers. Computers with physical storage media, likely what the killteam was searching for before they arrived. She smells an Opportunity. Whether that opportunity is for Espionage or Blackmail remains to be seen. |
| DRYCLEAN-SIGINT | The other main data-jockey is down. Extremely inconvenient. Tap to a rhythm, steady your signal. Keep winding back, and back, and back. Something has forced Dane out; forcing requires interaction; interaction is audible. Route it back. Let them keep their hijacking going; fighting them isn't worth it, there. Listen to their tune. Find the interloper. Shoot them a friendly little greeting. ... Vessel continues to fight for projector control. Slap the other two influences aside; screen's always been ours. An assessment across the rest of the team is made; and the pictures start shifting to useful. Visual pattern-matching likes to find shapes in noise; let's get that seeded. The killsquad starts having issues pinpointing exact locations of team members as indistinct images break up their outline like digital camo. Of course, the steady decrease in projectors renders this less and less useful over time; but everyone could use a little bit of help. |
| Futaba Nuki | "Who're you calling old?" Goritaba shouts back at the knife-wielder, making it rather clear just from her voice that she's not a... Actually. He did say 'old' gorilla. What's to say that kind of gorilla couldn't sound like a person, too? Her desire to mess with this guy's concept of gorillas is clashing head on with her desire to have a sick knife-katana duel with him, though, and she's actually kept at bay at first while engaging int he latter. Futaba's skill with a katana certainly isn't at the level of an expert, but she keeps her swings and slashes unpredictable with wild lunges and acrobatic flips that don't look anything like a gorilla should be able to pull off without stabbing herself in the process. Futaba can cheat a bit to make sure she doesn't, but that one guy does't need to know that. Remembering that she still has a job to do, though, Futaba finally relents briefly in her sick sword/knife fight to lash out with a broad kick at that one guy's midsection before pointing her sword forward dramatically. "I'll show you the power of the YOUNG animals, so watch closely!" Still showboating, Goritaba needs another moment to figure out where to actually aim. The condo's flickering has thankfully slowed down, but the static is still wreaking havoc on her eyes. Just picking that guy out from the static is still rough, but not impossible. She swallows her sword, lets out another questionably threatening roar, then slams her oversized fists on the ground to get on all fours as some kind of weird mechanical... Thing grows out of her back. Those familiar with Ishirou might recognize the shape of it as a certain POD unit. From that mechanical thing, Futaba keeps yelling while a strange crackling appears in front of it. There's a brief flash of light, and then a laser bursts out of it as she sweeps it horizontally across everything in her path, trying to just carve through everything with a big freaky laser. She's not actually sure if Ishirou's POD can fire lasers like that, but she'll give it a shot anyway. |
| Reyes | Reyes, still outside the building, works to coordinate with those inside. Raising his head he locks his visor on the targeted floor, HUD coming to life with all manner of scans as he works to pin down locations through coordinated thermal vision, any IFF signals, and tracing radio transmissions through his combat software's analysis. At the same time... hover-lift thrusters built into his armor's feet and legs deploy and ignite, sending the young man soaring aloft and upwards until he reaches the appropriate floor, circling the building until he's found the external point closest to all the chaos. It's not hard to find the windows where everything is going pear-shaped, of course, not for his sensors, but penetrating inside to get a good view of everything? Now that's the hard part. And with this approach, he really can't bother too much either. Reyes first BODY SLAMS through a window if there isn't already an opening... In one hand, he holds a shiny silvery revolver, its cylinder replaced with some strange wires and other unmoving machinery. In the other he has a small grey sphere with a blue gem embedded into it... In one direction, he hurls the gem far from comrades but hoping to catch as much ground as possible with it. With his other he takes aim at the opposing units one by one and pulls the trigger... sending almost invisible, noiseless ripples with the oomph to punch through steel at them. As soon as the 'grenade' comes to a halt, it erupts with tremendous power, a sphere of blue light screaming outwards in every direction with enough physical force to scrape the walls and floors clean by several inches, and to hurl anything loose like it was hit by a car while leaving things slightly burned and singed before the shockwave dissipates... |
| Father Berislav | They're stubborn. Rather, their employer is. Seconds are crucial in engagements like these. Go for the weapons first, then. Following the tactical overlay from Rose, he aims, not with his gun, but with his foot. A superhumanly powerful kick sends the couch flying across the room, to slam into the approximate position of one of the fire team. A kick from the opposite food sends him sliding backwards across hardwood floor, both hands on his gun for rapid three-round volley. More hollow points--but rather than fly towards the reinforced skulls directly, the trajectory is precisely calculated to pierce through the flung couch, strike armor plates, chins, shoulders--to send the massive bullet ricocheting into their SMGs and send their shots off course. As he passes beneath a modern metal table, and elbow strike pops it high into the air as a diversionary tactic (sudden movement following a surprise attack, to play upon adrenaline), with an agile kip-up forcing him back onto his feet. Faster than a human should, he reaches a blinding, static-screened wall, and runs along it, firing another two shots, intended to strike wrists and disarm two of the team, before he dives again in search of cover. |
| Starbound Flotilla | (1d20 <3>) Isaac's lightning smashes down, brutalizing men straight through their steel bones. Some of them are fried fast. But the most important part is the fire. The paper-thin inner walls start to burn easily. The room fills with even more smoke. But he's not wrong: These are monsters. Violet manages to duel quite a few of these men straight to death. Their wired reflexes and violent tendencies mean they threaten to plant monofilament blades in her body for her trouble, (1d20 <9>) still attached to its severed lower arm due to her ruthless dismemberment of their robotic enhancements. It's cover enough for explosives. (1d20 <7>) Attacking the men is always tough, but attacking the *projectors*, less so. The man is still grunting, crying out in pain as he's slammed through a projector and out into a stairwell, but it starts to reduce the overall profile of the white noise. A strange violet substance seeps out of one of the projectors that gets smashed, as if it were bleeding. Ophrys is looking for data, not manipulating hardware. She finds what she's looking for, in her invisible lurk. But it's not a computer. Not even a phone. One of the more important-looking men that Berislav just kicked a couch over (1d20 <11>) was carrying (1d10 <6>) a recorder pen bug, once used to bug the condo. It is encased in a plastic biohazard bag. Is it something she should take, given she's here to burn the place? Well, either way, at least investigators won't get their hands on it, right? DRYCLEAN-SIGINT is able to trace the interloper's interloper before they can cover their tracks. It's a long-running routine implanted somewhere in Dane's hardware, by Utga Labs itself. Futaba fundamentally misunderstands something: Most species are extinct in the vicinity of Cy and its associated world-zone. "Old mammal" must mean "long-dead". (1d20 <10>) Luckily, not now-dead; Futaba manages to drive him off, and most importantly, sweep a massive laser. Heat upon heat, lightning and laser start a true inferno, and the violent storm of loops in the local networks means that the fire suppression system starts, then stops, then starts again, before seemingly fizzling out. It goes well with Reyes' blasts, (1d20 <5>) which don't seem to tear apart as many men as they ought to, but at least successfully slam them around and blow open the exterior for a quick getaway. The place is close to sufficiently incinerated... And most of the foes are disoriented or forced into cover by expert maneuvers like Berislav's disarming strikes. An incredibly durable killteam, but far too overwhelmed to face the combat *and* preserve the environment. Now might be a good time to scram, one way or another. Opening fire from the outside has attracted those patrol drones, and those are THICK in Central when it comes to firefights that might (horror of horrors) lower the property value. Screams of incoming SecOps vehicles echo in the streets, though the people barely care. (1d100 <84>) Unbothered men in hazmat suits pick violet flowers springing through the pavement outside the building. |
| Isaac Beaufort | Fire has been started, though it wasn't intentional...well it would easily clean this place of anything else, combined with the bombs being planted. He trusts his partner in the Concord would know how to escape on her own, so instead he will pick up a phone, arranging transportation from a location. He also coordinates with Father Berislav about distraction. With that, he walks towards the window and leaps out a moment later. He falls towards the ground but rights himself to land on his feet. With a mighty impact, he cracks the earth, causing a minor earthquake thanks to a combination of the force of the fall, and his Persona's power before standing up. He runs in one direction, opposing Berislav's to cause as much chaos for the local forces as possible...and to a location where both he and Ophrys can meet up and leave later. |
| Ophrys | A man is kicked over by the Father. Before he can get up, a translucent oily shape slides into place above him. An arm rears back, then thrusts downward with the wet sound of steel sliding against steel. The biohazard bag containing storage data is procured, palmed and concealed by the optical camouflage before it's lifted up and tucked away. Only then does Ophrys become visible and-- she's looking very different from before she vanished. A black underlayer frought with gunmetal components, under carefully arranged deep purple and dark blue body plates. Her face is covered by an over-mouth rebreather mask. Most strikingly, glass-like wings protrude from behind her shoulders, while a round tapering tail hangs off the base of her spine, terminating in a long stinger. She yanks a curved blade out of the skull of the man she'd just looted, twirls it to scatter blood from it, then tucks it away. The wings start to move, humming and then buzzing as they wind up to a speed outside normal human perception. The mechanical buzz cuts off suddenly to a dull, easily ignored noise as she lifts off the floor. Like this, she melts out of sight again, though that oily silhouette darts out through the outer walls demolished by her own grenades and Reyes' artillery. |
| Nephra Tangent | Ditching the still-kicking guard now that he's descended in threat level and, somewhat, floor level, Nephra tries to, herself, smash a few projectors up, until violet technoblood- until her gauntlets are stained and the call that reinforcements are arriving comes. It's exit time, and she's already near the stairwell down. Approaching it, the lurch in her stomach catches her off guard as she mistakenly thinks about how high up she must be. Haha. Don't fall now.. Hopping gently over the prone guard she deposited there, she starts to rush down the stairs. She keeps her suit active, denting concrete steps as she goes, trying to keep her barrelling inertia high enough to crash through whatever defenses may or may not be waiting for her. She doesn't know what sort of bombs have been planted, but she's damned if she'll find out the hard way- even if a view of the fireworks would be fun. She makes sure not to stop at the bottom or the lobby, but if the area's clear of obvious guards at the exit of the stairs, she does disengage her suit, collapsing it back to how its stored, somewhat hidden, in her spine. Best not to be quite so obvious a combatant, even if she stands out like a sore thumb amongst the civilian crowds. Hoofing it's not the best plan, in this locked-down city, but getting outside at least means she'll be safe enough to regroup. She hopes. |
| Futaba Nuki | Fundamental misunderstandings are Futaba's bread and butter when cool fights are involved. It's anything but cool in here thanks to all the fire, but it's still an impressive sight nonetheless even as the growth on Futaba's back pulls back into her body while she slides back into her regular, humanoid form complete with a red ninja-y outfit and a mouth concealing bandana that matches rather well with the raccoon-like markings over her eyes. She still has the gorilla-shaped arms, though. "Learn from what happened here, corp guys! If you don't stop forcing people into crappy loans, the old mammals and their allies will be back to do this again and again until you finally get it through your thick skulls." She shouts in warning before rushing for one of the farther walls. As she picks up speed, she braces one of those giant arms in front of her in order to just smash herself through the walls with a running leap into the night sky. It's a rather freaky looking leap, though, what with those gorilla-sized arms turning into large wings, and with Futaba's legs growing longer behind her in case anyone needs to grab on for the daring escape. It isn't long, though, before she starts gliding away, flapping every now and then on the way down to mix into those within the city and slink away with one more transformation into a sliding pile of goo |
| KNK | Violet's brain is running hot. Her own injectors are automatic, controlled at a thought, pumping right below her brain's membrane and into what replaced her veins. It's not really the same as thinking. She has to skip everything that could be recognized as 'thought,' and even rely on a few less organic systems, to do more than keep up. But she has to stay just one step ahead, because the moment that monofilament catches her, she'll lose a limb, her balance, and then be down for the fight. She can usually stay a few steps ahead, but just one step, then half a step, then a hair's breadth will have to do. Futaba hadn't warned her in time, but Violet reacts to the sweeping laser faster than her opponents can. Again, she goes low. That's easier for her. The advantage of gravity and potential energy stops mattering at the speeds she operates at, but the advantage of stabbing people in their ankles remains. Rose wants material, and Violet obliges as well she's able. Once she's immobilized, or even delayed her opponent for a moment, she aims that bigger swing, artificial muscles straining with an audible whine to add a little more force to what's mainly the work of an HF-blade. Whether she takes their lives doesn't matter as much as whether she takes their arms, the material at least being good in trade for what she needs to recover from those small scrapes and burns she couldn't quite avoid. She doesn't feel them, but she'll see every one of them in the mirror when she's home again. Her grappling lines are also good for quick ties, and lashing together a bundle of not-so-gory prizes. One more line half-secured in the room, and she jumps out the opening in the wall when Rose yells "Clear!" Away and down, they both fall, land foot to wall, and run faster that gravity could take them, only slowing to redirect their momentum toward the end, leaping away, rolling, and slipping back into near-perfect invisibility. The bombs go off just before they hit the ground. With walls that thin, it's more of a question whether the building will still be standing, rather than whether there'll be anything left of the room for a detective to pick through. |
| DRYCLEAN-SIGINT | A figure that does not belong pushes off from a lean against a wall, waltzing over to the hazmat team with an uncanny spring to their step. They reach down and pick one of the flowers from a side of the curb that they haven't quite gotten to. It's rotated in their hand for a scant second, before they pocket it and give a swift two-finger salute to the hazmat team. "Pleasure doin' business, folks. Keep up th'good work." And with a heel-turn and a successful reaction to an uncanny prediction over how the hazmat team responds to this, they're away, swept into the arms of a tenuous comrade's chassis and crammed strangely into gaps behind Berislav's chair in the cockpit. A few bullets from the encroaching security knocks a hole in a screen, but that's alright. ... An inside job. Funny, really; if Dane lives through this whole operation, he'll have a little notification on his machine informing him of the culprit for that. But in the meantime, focus spreads; the incoming drones start receiving massively inconsistent information. IFF signals are scrambled wildly, friendlies and incoming security swapped; drones turn on drones turn on ground forces. It's pandemonium! And just the right type to help the rest of the team get out clean. Good work, folks. |
| Reyes | Packing away his weapons after the quick bust-in to give everyone some relief, and retrieving the spent, no-longer-glowy orb he cast out like a grenade with telekinesis, Reyes engages the thrusters of his Grease Monkey power armor and leaps out of the building again. The thrusters aren't really designed for dramatic combat maneuvers, but panels soon open up along the armor's arms and back and what seems like a blue flame that doesn't flow like ordinary fire's thrust out under pressure. Full-on flight-mode thrusters now engaged he can right his ascent parabola and begin to speed away from the zone, dropping into the streets after using his sensors to build a map... Time to make an escape! |
| Father Berislav | More servants of sin. I see. distraction is in order, then. <J-IC-Scene> KNK. Rose says, "Clear! Clear! Bombs are down, *jump* if you can." Following Isaac's example, Berislav vaults the overturned table from his assault just a few seconds prior, a fluid sprint in motion the moment his feet hit the ground. As he sprints, fully jacketed cartridges snugly fitted into a moon clip appear in his empty hand, empty casings ejected from the cylinder with a swing of the other hand. Click. Out through the hole that Isaac made, he sails in a graceful dive over the crater made by his impact. Six bullets clear the gun before he's even halfway down, bouncing in a chaotic crossfire between the drones and the arriving SecOps. In the short time that affords him, he extends his empty hand. Out from that realm of endless, burning orange, there emerges beneath him a weapon of war. Gleaming silver, with a baleful pair of vertically aligned red eyes, set in an inhuman, hammerlike head. A red cloak billows at its shoulder, the name embroidered: ISAIAH 3:14 It reaches upwards, easily six times as tall as the priest, and gently plucks him from the air, quickly lowering him as it falls to the earth, worsening the crater caused by Isaac's descent. Berislav is tucked into the cockpit, a red-lit maw of interlocking black 'ribs' that closes after him. The war machine sweeps its leg across the gathering forces, then reaches back for the haft of a war pick. When the blunt end of the head is brought down against asphalt, a massive aftershock follows, terror tactics at work to give DRYCLEAN enough time to catch up and board, however they intend. The mech then departs with its passenger in tow, the loudspeakers broadcasting proclamations to further draw attention. "Jesus answered, 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.'" |
| Starbound Flotilla | Isaac reaches the ground, cracking pristine, corporate-branded asphalt. A message from Y/N pops up, advising that Isaac and Berislav, both intending to escape, should lose their pursuers in the Laketon slums to the east or in the G0 exclusion zone to the northeast. It advises Isaac flee to the Exclusion zone (more suited for beating nanophreaks and enduring radiation) and Berislav should flee to Laketon (more suited to ingratiating himself with oppressed locals and not drawing the ire of defensive local gangs). The others, with that distraction, can engage in their own escape, though they'll need to use DRYCLEAN-SIGINT's network smokescreen to get the hell out unless they're taking the tough route. To the southwest lie a few aquaculture cages and congealed plastic platforms, the outlet of Lake Gravel leading out to the ocean in a stream of trash. Men in the burning apartment fire their guns as if shooting the intruders in the back would solve it. The important-looking fellow that Ophrys snatched the pen-recorder from reaches up. "No, nnnh, no!" He shouts, as the blade plunges into his skull, eventually breaching the steel reinforcements and coming to rest somewhere between a regretful thought and an enraged indignity, which is to say, the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. The others, like Nephra, are getting away on foot. DRYCLEAN-SIGINT wreaks havok in a place where "getting to an alarm on-time" is the fundamental basis of all power, so the hazmat team urgently calling this in isn't too dire. What is a bit dire is how the flower twists in their hands, in a way that implies no wind where there certainly is some. As for non-foot exits, well, dodging some anti-air is always needed, but it's possible with the right maneuvers. This should get everyone out, though it means Isaac and Berislav (and those who choose to accompany) wind up needing to go to ground for a few hours. |
| Ophrys | Something heavy lands somewhat gently on Isaac's shoulders. Solid, metal. After a moment, the oily silhouette's cloaking drops-- It's Ophrys, her feet resting on the young man's shoulders in such a way that his arms fill the 'arch' in the high-heeled design of her metallic feet. She leans back enough to bed forward and look down towards his face, golden eyes glowing faintly in Cy's gloomy evening, "Let's go, shall we?" The 'heels' on her feet articulate, closing up under his armpits in a relatively comfortable hold. The wings spin up again, rising to a buzz and then-- suddenly going quiet as she takes off with the teen hanging beneath herself. With the added speed of Flight, the pair weave through buildings towards the G0 Exclusion Zone as recommended by Y/N. |
| KNK | 'Getting away without being noticed' is, predictably, a ninja's favorite skill. It's still hard to pass some checkpoints, which makes 'laying low for a few hours' a fine detour. Rose and Violet head that way, Violet still carrying her loot. They need to be somewhere completely out of sight before they can do a proper assessment of damage. Even Violet can get a little embarrassed with how meticulous Rose is when she checks. Ophrys will get an invoice, later. The high number comes pre-baked with how much Rose considers her bomb-making time to be worth. |
| Father Berislav | "When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth." "Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.'" "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." <J-IC-Scene> Y/N says, "Non-diversionary escape facilitated by network interloper. Alternate subtle route through southwest aquaculture to leave Cy temporarily is available. Accept guidance. Y/N" <J-IC-Scene> Father Berislav says, "No, thank you." Guidance nonetheless appears on a monitor, in the dim red glow. Berislav sighs. "Dryclean, would you mind moving your manipulator just a bit? I may as well at least hear them out." As his hands, feet and nervous system guide the mech through a roving firefight, his silver brows widen, and he reaches for a pair of reading glasses hanging on a personal-effects rack. "Oh, I see," he says, in a pleasantly surprised tone. Flipping a toggle switch back into the tacnet, he clarifies. <J-IC-Scene> Father Berislav says, "I'm sorry, Y/N. I thought you meant 'subtle' in a different way. Yes--that looks lovely, thank you." The mech transitions from fighting on the run to running all the way, its movements through the streets putting buildings between it and the pursuing SecOps forces, limbs moving as fluidly as if it were a living thing. Sparks fly as its feet grind against asphalt following long leaps, empty hand occasionally thrown out to use those same buildings to take corners extra-tight. The military barricades from before are cleared with a high-flying frontflip. Between its speed and grace, the mech is able to clear a lot of distance, on its way to Laketon. |
| Nephra Tangent | The path out is laid by the helpful friend on the radio, and intensely loud preaching from a friendly neighborhood indomitable war machine. She takes a deep breath of air, as her nerves jitter and the adrenaline starts to clear her system. She's not out yet, but the breather's appreciated. She could try her luck with the Exclusion Zone, but, rigorous as her blood-scrubbers and armor's insulation may be, leaving through somewhere tamer is a better way to not push her luck. Radiation sickness isn't very fun, she's learned that the hard way. Nephra tugs up the hood of her jacket, and sticks shaking gloved hands into its pockets. It doesn't make her any less bright, but she can at least pretend she's more unassuming than a six foot beanpole of bright neon vinyl. Opting to walk- hastily, but still a walking pace- she prays silently that the InfoSec DRYCLEAN has under control extends enough to let her slip past the expected bounds of the commotion, and on into the aquaculture facilities. Scanners and security wouldn't find the weapons on her person- she doesn't have any- and she does her best to keep the signature of her reactor low and slow. If she can pass herself off as just some sort of multiversal cybermodding punk, she shouldn't get hassled too much, and even if she does, she's familiar with the kind of apolagetic play-along required. At least the barricades have something bigger on their minds right now. Thanks, Father Berislav. As alleyways and fences are passed through and clambered over, the more industrial parts of the city become less intimidating to Nephra. Somewhat familiar, even. Trash streams and garbage barges are a good place to not attract the kind of attention she certainly doesn't want right now, and she sets her eyes on hitching a ride out on one. It's a way out, at least, if you don't mind the smell. |
| DRYCLEAN-SIGINT | Morphic form adjusts to allow Berislav proper range of manipulation from within the cockpit. Static oozes from the shattered primary monitor, ebbing and flowing as drones move in and out of a range at which they'd be a problem. All in all, it's... pretty unpleasant to be cooped up in here with them, with the bulk and the sound and the faint smell of rotting biomass thriving microbiome. Even more unpleasant, of course, is when they pull out the stolen plant from a pocket and jam it into the hole in their head; apparently as a different form of storage. It falls into a small pool of unpleasant black sludge within. A few seconds pass, and then they return to rhythmically tapping the bulky greatsword that takes up most of the awkward space they occupy. Tink - hum. Tink - hum. <Q-Conversation> Tomi Dian says, "It's Cy. Everything's a fuckin' cognitohazard around here." "Fascinatin' stuff. How much you reckon this stuff'll come back t'bite us, later?" An audio clip of someone hard-boiled laughing plays as a drone careens into the side of a security van. "Reckon it won't matter regardless. Guess I owe you another, pal." And there they ride, until the safehouses are within throwing distance and a folded shape lowers down to claim them. Without a trace. |