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Eclipse Phase (Private)

Devin skittered down next to Vidar. "I can't take you anywhere without you getting full of bullets," he complained, checking Vidar's bloody vacsuit and calling for a medic. He looked up at the Meg and added, "I don't think he's tried to ask anyone out on a date in like, two years? You don't have to say yes, of course, but you ought to be flattered."
 
“What, I- fucking shit-“ the Meg swears, expecting neither Devin’s remark nor yet another casualty of the shootout. Taking a cue from Devin, she calls out: “Camille - if you got any of your people to spare, i need ‘em over here now!!”

The Meg gets down on her knees at Vidar’s side, performing basic first aid while they wait for a trained paramedic. “Ti, fuckin hell - there’s better ways to ask a lady on a date than getting yourself shot by an angry fork,” she jokes as a colorfully garbed scum barger comes trotting over.

“What’s the word?”
“Looks like he took a hit from a particle beam bolter,” the Meg says. “These are some pretty serious burns, and he’s losing blood.”
“Okay, let’s get him out of that vacsuit so i can clean and dress the wound,” the scum barger says. “I’ll get somethin ready - is he good to carry?”
“Good question,” the Meg says, softening her voice to speak to the wounded Vidar in a deep, soothing tone: “hey, Ti, we’re gonna move you over to where we can treat your wound - you cool with being picked up and carried?”
 
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For a moment his wits were chasing themselves around and being called Ti displaced him in time and he looked about for a familiar face but found only The Meg and then Devin who gave him a discreet double thumbs up and he said, "Yes?" And his fate was sealed.
 
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As Vidar's wounds are tended to by Devin, the Meg, and a scum paramedic, Yasmin turns at the sound of wingbeats to see Scirocco fly in and find a spot to land on a nearby 'crate.'

Ebonstahl {The Eye}: [So this is them, is it?]
Atreides Apogee {The Eye}: [Affirmative.]
Ebonstahl {The Eye}: [Guess they weren't expecting our team to put up such a fight.]
Atreides Apogee {The Eye}: [Indeed. We also have the intervention of our new comrade to thank for that.]
Ebonstahl {The Eye}: [What's the status of Marcus?]
Atreides Apogee {The Eye}: [Incapacitated. Jukebox Maiden was able to use the disabler you recovered from Eighth Frame in order to take him offline.]

Sirocco clicks in a neo-raven approximation of an impressed whistle.

Ebonstahl {The Eye}: [She's got some backbone, I'll give her that.]
Atreides Apogee {The Eye}: [The rest of them were disabled through more final means.]
Ebonstahl {The Eye}: [I always loved your sense of understatement. Are we taking them with us as well? I'd be curious to know what they thought they'd get off the old boy.]
Atreides Apogee {The Eye}: [They are secondary to our concerns at the moment. We have Marcus and we need to extract his stack.]
Ebonstahl {The Eye}: [Understood. I'm sure I can dig up or find a kit to pop his stack out of there from the wreckage of my shop.]
Ebonstahl {The Eye}: [What about- oh dear]

Yasmin crosses to just off to the side of the operation to save Mach's security pod, standing off to avoid getting in anyone's way - taking a place by Khyar ad-Din and looking very small next to him.
"Is he going to make it?"
"Camille seems to think so - and as one of the barge's best battlefield medics, I trust her judgement."
"How long will he need?"
"In that morph?" Khyar ad-Din takes a breath. "They're going to need hours to keep the stem the bleeding while they perform emergency surgery. Camille says around eight hours - and she's laid claim to the Singularity Seeker's guard morph to return the favor. If you've got a Doc-Bot on deck, I'd bring it in about now, because he's going to need a long time in a meditank before he'll be conscious."
"How long?"
"At least a day."
"Will he be recovered in that time?"
"That will take longer: not quite a week, from what she tells me."
Yasmin swears under her breath.
"Very well. Thank you all so much for your help."
Khyar ad-Din looks to her and wraps his huge arm around her shoulder; Yasmin leans into him, her bouncer comparatively small against his colorfully bedecked neo-neanderthal.

Ebonstahl {The Eye}: [I am loathe to cut this short but we really should see about getting Marcus' stack pulled. I want to be done with this and get back to fixing my shop.]
Atreides Apogee {The Eye}: [understood.]

SITUATIONAL UPDATE:
-Rogue Fork of Agent: Sleipnir neutralized. Morph acquired, proceeding to remove stack - request location for dead-drop.
-Singularity Seekers neutralized. Recovery advised, but not critical to current mission.
-Agent: Sleipnir in critical condition following attempt by rogue fork to seize him; local bargers are working to save his life, but he will need a week of meditank time to fully recover. Advise including a Dr. Bot in our transport to Mars - to be dispatched to our location sooner for recovery of Agent: Sleipnir if possible.
-Agent: Heliotrope wounded in action, however his are considerably less serious and he is expected to make a full recovery within the day.
-Agent: Jukebox Maiden instrumental to operation success - recommend assigning her to this team if possible.
-Potential Recruit 'M. Hamilton' currently under the effects of Buzz, long-term memory formation inhibited; has proven herself in two different operations, however is not keen on our having to maintain opsec. Recommend briefing and recruiting her ASAP - please advise.
-Attackers encountered during Annora Arabella operation remain unknown at this time - we have had no time to investigate. Unclear if whoever sent them is aware of our escape, or has agents assigned to trail us. Please advise.

About two hours after the firefight concludes, a message arrives for every sentinel involved in the operation. It is from Starglass.
MESSAGE:
[Excellent work handling a difficult situation quickly, team. Capturing the hostile fork's stack will keep valuable intelligence on the Annora Arabella mission from falling into the wrong hands and compromising the status of Sleipnir, in addition to giving us a source of intel on his employer. Your work on the scum swarm has not gone unrecognized, and I will be sure that the mission reports reflect that.

We have been working to arrange transport for you to your next theatre of operation, and we're close to completing arrangements. From the intel we have so far, we know the source of the tech is somewhere on Mars - but the exact location remains unknown, as is much of the tech you were able to get us a look at. We're doing what we can to inquire further, but we may need your investigative skills in-theatre in order to acquire more information and potentially locate the source before we can proceed further. Pursuant to this end, we are in talks with the crew of a ship that can break off from the scum swarm and ship you all to Mars orbit: we're hoping to have arrangements made within two days, and to have you underway for the week-long journey as soon as possible. We're working on getting the ship supplied with equipment to help our casualties and to give you some downtime to recover from the last two operations, as well, so while it might not be a luxury cruise, hopefully it's at least reasonably comfortable.

Given the demographics of the crew and the ship we're in talks with, we'll be sending you to Pontes station: its friendly toward autonomist politics, and there are a number of extropian hypercorps and titanian microcorps who can do business with you and also facilitate credit to rep transactions as needed, to ease the transition into a transitional economy for those of you comfortable with new economy ways of doing things. You'll likely be able to meet a lot of folks there who won't mind you're from the outer system or similar such polities, but be warned: Pontes is absolutely a Consortium-aligned station, so your movements will be watched by CorpSec and documented accordingly. Further, make sure to acquire any illegal tech you might need or want with the downtime between now and shipping out - it will be much harder to come by certain kinds of equipment on Pontes, and surveillance will no longer be your friend. Finally - expect to keep your weapons stowed away and out of sight upon your arrival on Pontes station - open guns will draw a lot more attention there, particularly if they're modded. We'll do our best to get any gear you need smuggled into orbit or onto the surface into place for where you need it, but make sure you know what you're doing before you access it.

Finally, I'll take this chance to address a rather rude message I received while making arrangements. The question arose as to where exactly you will be operating, and what kind of operational support you'll be receiving: the answer is that you will be operating wherever the intel takes you, in order to do whatever it takes to complete the mission and preserve our collective existence. You are sentinels because you are adept at making the most of your skills and your environment to succeed. I am not at liberty to discuss particulars right now for reasons that should be obvious for anyone with an understanding of compartmentalization and operational security, but we're making as many arrangements as we can to ensure your operation can succeed while being discreet. Deniability and stealth allow us to do what we do; explosives and tanks are the opposite of deniable.

Use the time you have to rest, lick your wounds, and acquire whatever equipment you need. Be ready to ship out in two days' time.]
 
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Through the chaos of everything happening around Eppie, it's difficult to focus on any one thing - two of the other sentinels are wounded, badly, and although the one who messaged her earlier, Viddy, seems like he'll be okay in a bit, by the way he seems to be... Well, she's not entirely sure if it's flirting, but he seems to be trying to shoot his shot with the lady Zhou look-alike. The other - Mach, according to rep profiles - is surrounded by some doctors, who are trying to patch him up, but from what she picks up from their conversations, it doesn't sound like a prognosis of speedy recovery. She winces empathetically when they move enough for her to spot some of the wounds.

She looks up as Cheng-i-Sao speaks to her, blinking a moment as she catches up to some of the messages she's received in the few moments she checked out. She smiles, hoping the effect is warm and Cheng-i-Sao is not unsettled by her, "For sure, I'll pass that along."

At that moment, she gets a message from someone she doesn't recognize - but a quick scan of rep profile reveals them to be the missing member of the team, Rushing Jaws:
AzathothWakes {PM to Jukebox Maiden}: [hey there! got the update from Starglass, figured I'd pm you as the squad's missing tac-ops specialist n' medic. you been takin care of these jokers?]

Eppie's lips quirk into a tiny grin despite herself:
Jukebox Maiden {PM to AzathothWakes}: [been trying my best to! where are you hiding? i dont remember seeing you out here]
 
Vidar sits where Suzanna left him, with his jumpsuit unzipped to his waist, a cold pack tucked against his nose (an item so anachronistic as to make him laugh hard to enough make suzana scold him) and a cigarette Devin had tucked in his mouth before scampering off to help with the fallout of their latest operation. He can't feel the burns anymore but she had been insistent that it would take at least a day for the medichines to finish up and she says it with the knowing look of a medic who knows when some is capable of being “back on their bullshit” at any minute.

The Meg is not the next person he expects to see approach him after Suzanna clears out, but there she is. And he curses internally.

[Oh Come on boss you already asked her out!]

'I don't think that counts!'

[Maybe she will say yes!]

'OH GOD.'

[Boss blease]

But he made eye contact and smiled, and tried to think of something human and pleasant to say, thinking that maybe he’d used up the last of that reserve while thanking Suzanna. His brain had returns to feeling like it had been gone at with various dental tools and the sensation was leaking into his spine and eyes still.

“H-hi.”

“Hey there,” the Meg says, with a softness that is almost jarring coming from the towering, saurian bruiser morph she sleeves. “Figured I’d check in - between the sword-” a hand tapping the hilt of the same blade from earlier “- and the bolter burns, you’ve had a pretty bad day. Holding up alright?”

“Not my best showing, but I've had worst. Uh- Sorry we ruined pirates? I really am.”

'PENNY'

[I think this is what the youth call gay panic.]

'DONT QUOTE THE DARK MAGICS WITCH I WAS THERE WHEN IT WAS WRITTEN'

[Focus.]

He is trying to look her in the face but can't manage it. The tenderness in her voice does not escape him- he had very much assumed he would be rejected with the same cavalier no harm no foul most scum adopted.

“I’m tempted to think there’s more going on here than meets the eye,” the Meg quips. “I don’t know what kind of bad luck it takes for someone’s rogue fork to shoot up an MARG on some kind of vendetta. I dunno what your game friend did to piss his fork off so bad but I hope almost killin’ him was worth the scorcher. I guess, all things considered, we’ll be okay.”

“Tell you what though - worth it to watch you take down the speaker the way you did. That was some fuckin’ poetry in motion.”

The Meg regards Vidar the way someone does before landing a playful blow to the shoulder, but thankfully does not follow through on that: “where the hell was that, earlier?”

“Oh uh- I rolled in here stoned as fucked. I’m not gonna lie. It was birthday time- I was just here for a laugh,” He says apologetically. He is extremely glad she changed the subject away from her hunch and that he didn’t seem to have to play too much op-sec bingo with her. “The speaker spooked the shit out of me- really knocked some sense into me. Also. I’m very small today,” He said motioning at all of him and then wishing he hadn’t as he watched her eyes naturally follow the motion.

“Aha, a classic mistake,” the Meg quips. “Twelve hours herb to hilt - don’t they teach you that in the dojos over on Locus? I got the sense you were still adjusting to your new sleeve though, your movements had that sort of glitchy thing you see in folks ‘still havent fully adjusted yet. Glad you were able to shake it off before taking on the Speaker though. Helluv performance, that - you pick up those moves back in Oslo?”

That throws him for a moment, but it’s not anything that isn’t on his profile and he nods. He doesn’t say out loud that he practically invented NKF and that he’s going to smoke weed everyday for six hundred years because Penny said not to.
“Yeah- I ran NKF dojo for forty years,” He tried to do the math, to see if he was over or under rounding but his neurons were strangely refusing to do math, they’re favorite pastime, and he decided it hardly mattered anyway. “And thanks, Today would have been a lot of fun if ya know-”

“Rogue fork with a vendetta,” the Meg says, laughing softly. “I actually watched the vids from your demo on Locus, the one that went viral. Just - watching your bladework in microgravity was something else. It had me thinking for hours about the ways you could adapt that to close-quarters fighting. Like, it’s ten-AF, but when the ammo’s out or you’re too close for guns - that’s where the potential for blades comes in.”

The Meg’s next thought is preceded by a short laugh: “I dunno if swords have a place in space, but you sure made it look like they do.”

This elicits a blush, because the review is glowing and nothing, absolutely nothing about him is designed for space. He’d been terrified for a moment that she was going to bring up the /other/ video, the one where Eddie sent him flying.

“If there’s no place for swords there’s no place for me- I’m glad you liked the video. Thank you. It means a lot.” He paused for a moment, “Do you want to get drinks later? Maybe?”

The Meg crooks her brow slightly but still smiles, more surprised by Vidar’s boldness than anything: “It would be my pleasure, captain Knifvar~”

Vidar’s face lights up in surprise around and he tries not to lose it, but he’s had a long day and it sneaks out of him. Until he’s laughing and he says, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry- You just called me Captain Knife Daddy- And its been a long fucking day.” He said using English to help game the translator.

The Meg’s expression doesn’t waver as she looks him dead in the eyes and says: “did I fucking stutter?”

His brows go up for a moment at the mock challenge but he can’t hold it- because the truth is important.

“Oh I don’t want to disappoint, but I don’t think anyone has ever called my dumb sub ass daddy,” He says. For the first time in the conversation he didn’t feel like a sputtering idiot. The Meg was his kind of people and he was living.
 
Simulspace
The Puget Sound, Nowhere in Particular​

The Mother Fuck's servers might lack the processing power to make the rendition of his simulated 'home' waters totally immersive, but Rushing Jaws is easily able to forgive the corners that had to be cut as he feels his simulated tonnage immersed in cool, clear waters filled with fish. Surfacing, spouting, drawing breath, and then submerging feels as natural as he could hope for, and the fish - while dumb - make for reasonably good sport for a drugged neo-orca to amuse himself as he checks in and out of the operation in progress. The simulated Sound does its best to keep up with him, everything having a film grain on it past a few meters; Māzǔpó took the liberty of applying a fog effect, creating a somewhat eerie feel to above the water's surface but countering the even more uncanny feeling of looking out at bald, low-textured mountains. With a splash of his huge tail, Rushing Jaws dives back into the cool waters, feeling the most at-home he's felt since this mission began.

It beats the hell out of floating in a meditank, medicated near to catatonia to keep machine gun bullet wounds from hurting beyond hell.

Damn though - they really got to play pirates?
[See what happens when we don't take cover?]
I stand by my tactical decisions on the basis that we got everyone out of there alive.
[Then I'm sure you won't feel any regrets knowing they got to play for two hours.]
Have I been out for that long?
[Just about, yes. Kotsya was kind enough to help me run something like a comfortable simulspace for you on hardware that was not exactly designed for it while you were out.]
Word! I'll see about getting him some weed or somethin.

Before he can follow up on that, however, a response arrives over the Eye:
Jukebox Maiden {PM to AzathothWakes}: [been trying my best to! where are you hiding? i dont remember seeing you out here]

AzathothWakes {PM to Jukebox Maiden}: [Smaller ship in the swarm that was kind enough to let me borrow their meditank and nap for a couple'a hours; last op got rough enough that I'll be soaking in here for another couple of days while I get some organs re-grown. Might see about getting some medichines while I'm in here too - high calibre bullet wounds fuckin' suck when your pain suppressors wear off.]

Fuckin- okay, lets see here, who's around who might be able to hook an orca up with some medichines?
[You could talk to our friend from earlier?]
Which?
[Felicia?]
Māz, help a sleepy whale out here.
[Felicia Menendez. You scored MRDR off of her earlier.]
Truuuue.
[You know, there's a poetry to you going to the person for medichines following an adventure you scored MRDR off of them for.]

Rushing Jaws takes his roasting with grace as he has Māzǔpó try to get in touch with Felicia, swimming in lazy corkscrews and flips to pass the time; after an interval of time he doesn't bother to track, Rushing Jaws gets a ping from the rep handle he was lookin for.

AlegríaDeLosEnjambres: [Amigo!! Didn't think I was gonna hear from you so soon! ¿que pasa?]
MurderSurfer: [Very little. Gonna have to take a rain check on hangin' out tho]
AlegríaDeLosEnjambres: [Nooo!!! Amigo, that's no way to pitch a favor :c]
MurderSurfer: [Your MRDR did real good - 's the only reason I'm talkin to ya right now]
AlegríaDeLosEnjambres: [:O ¿qué pasó?]
MurderSurfer: [That bullshit from earlier? Let's just say I'm fulla holes now.]
AlegríaDeLosEnjambres: [:neutralteeth::neutralteeth::neutralteeth:]
MurderSurfer: [So yeah, 'figured while I was bobbing in a meditank, I'd ask around for medichines and get 'em installed.]
AlegríaDeLosEnjambres: [i got'chu, amigo. where you at?]
MurderSurfer: [Mother Fuck, borrowing their meditank.]
AlegríaDeLosEnjambres: [Ayyy!! Them's good people!! gimme like, media hora n' I'll set it up for you, yeah?]
MurderSurfer: [you're the fuckin' best]
AlegríaDeLosEnjambres: [I fuck the best, too ;)]

Rushing Jaws gets a good orca-scream laugh out of that.

MurderSurfer: [noted ]
 
Mach wasn’t sure what was going on.
The scene faded in like some horribly drunken haze.
He thought he recognized this… Yes. He knew what was going on.

Qing Long
Spaceport Warehouses, 2 Years Ago

“So, let’s see what you have brought us,” a sharp-dressed man named Zhao says to Mach.
Aboard the massive O’neil cylinder Qing Long, within a warehouse in one of the cylinder’s spaceport spars outside of gravity, a meeting is underway. On one side, four sharp-dressed 14K Triad agents accompany Zhao, two on each side and still as statues save for their keeping position in the microgravity of the dimly lit warehouse. Zhao himself has the air of a man holding all the cards: his suit, impeccably fitted to his handsome frame, is black, iridescent Galaxy Entertainment Group lapel pin and dragon’s head cufflinks drawing the eyes with splashes of color and faint radiation traces. The warehouse itself is well-stocked with crates that restrict line-of-sight in all directions past a few meters, setting up the perfect location for a docking spar deal...or an ambush.

Marcus didn’t like this. He didn’t even remember planning it, really. He had no idea why he’d been blackout drunk, and he’d never planned a deal under the influence, so this seemed like bad plays, all around. But he’d marked it down, and the muscle behind him matched Zhao’s for firepower. Maybe bested them in durability, but Mach couldn’t be sure. He patted the box next to him and said “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you what’s in here, and why I’m not gonna open it for long. Radiation doesn’t do a morph good, y’know?” before undoing a few latches and revealing the crate’s contents: a heavily irradiated bit of TITAN tech, presumed to be some kind of fusion cell. Mach was sure it wasn’t, but it was definitely something. He waited, let them all look, then slammed the lid. “So, are we going to just trade at the agreed price, or was I right to leave my schedule open for an hour of renegotiating?”

Zhou’s small smirk widens by a hair to hear the question, otherwise unmoving. He is silent for a moment, his eyes focusing on his own entoptics, before returning to the matter at hand.
“I would say that was a prudent choice, as I am less concerned by an excess of radiation as I am by the fact you want me to pay millions of credits for an unverified piece of technology. Your dossier contains more ‘presumably’ and ‘unknowns’ than I am comfortable accepting for the listed asking price, so I will require a detailed explanation of this artifact and why it is so valuable.”

“I don’t expect you know a lot about nuclear fission. It’s an uncommon power source nowadays, and a lot of people consider the risks not to be worth the benefits. The thing is, the radiation from the artifact, and the material inside it? It’s Thorium. A specific radioactive isotope that’s extremely difficult to weaponize, but beats Uranium out for efficiency as a fuel any time. Humans never really finished developing reactors that could utilize it before the Fall. But given the composition of this artifact, the Thorium presence, and the general form factor, it’s clearly a part of some kind of reactor. Hopefully a fuel cell. And, that’s the best kind of tech: You don’t need to break into a chip or try fighting exsurgent. You just need to figure out how the mechanical components work, and extrapolate how it would fit into a completed reactor. A good team of engineers could probably get results in a year or less. It’s not just worth a few million because it’s TITAN reactor tech. It’s worth that because you can actually reverse-engineer it within a decade or two. Honestly, if I had a team of scientists, I’d be cracking this tech myself.” he said, knowing that even with a full explanation Zhou would probably bring the price down. Mach left himself some bargaining room, but he hoped he wouldn’t need ALL of it.

Zhou’s smirk fades back to the ghost of itself, and he once again checks out to examine something on his entoptic displays.
“So, you’re trying to sell me a piece of a reactor rather than a reactor itself? If this device on its own could match the output of one of Qing Long’s fusion reactors, I might be impressed; as it stands now, I see little reason to purchase so small and hostile a thing for so dear a price. Tell me - where and how did you acquire this?”

Mach frowned too, for very different reasons. “My… Employer sent a team to earth to acquire this. California, San francisco battleground. This was originally part of the power plant from a massive mobile weapons platform. Unfortunately, the thing died during the fall, and whatever killed it got a lucky shot on the reactor itself. The two crates there contain a few more components from the same site, bearing the same thorium signature. Their purpose is… less conclusive than the cell. And none of them are the fission chamber. However, my experts on Reactor tech seem to think this would let you get started on a thorium reactor. And given that one ton can match two and a half thousand tons of uranium… Well. It’s bound to at least match Qing Long, and it’s going to be way cheaper to run. Now, obviously, I understand if you’re unimpressed. It’s no data drive, and energy revolutions aren’t normally what my clients look for… But intact Nano-weapons are exceedingly rare, exceedingly dangerous, and only suicidal maniacs would touch them. That being said, I believe that I could reduce the price by a quarter million if you insisted.”

Once again, Zhou’s response is delayed, the man checking his entoptics again as the shadow of his smirk vanishes completely.
“It seems your employer went to a lot of trouble to recover such a curiosity from the homeworld, mister Mach, but such an offer falls far short of what I am willing to pay for it - and I will explain why. Qing Long is comfortably powered by an array of fusion reactors that require no more than a couple of isotopes of the most abundant element in our universe, and our contractors on Luna are all too happy to supply us with the fuel we need to run them at a reasonable rate. Rather than utilize the tried-and-tested balance of high output, high efficiency, and storable fuel I might find in a fusion reactor, you are asking me to pay a great deal of money for a component of a reactor for which my company would have to pay an unacceptable amount of money to reverse-engineer, develop, and source the fuel for. Fissile materials are among the rarest naturally-occurring elements in the universe, and are almost entirely the province of the inner planets. I might pay a quarter of a million to add it to my personal collection, but I will require a considerably better reason to pay even half the price you are asking for it.”

At this point, Mach was wondering why his planner was so insistent on this deal’s importance. Nobody cared. At all. What the FUCK. Nerrix supposedly saw some reason that it was worth forcing Mach to go through with it, but… Damn it, Mach never got that drunk before in his life and he saw exactly why. It was because shit like this happened. “Perhaps I should have set the asking price instead of my employer, as he expects a much larger payout than two-hundred-fifty-thousand. That would be an acceptable price for one piece, however. Three-quarters and I might let the whole collection go. At least then we’re not just barely breaking even.” he said, knowing damn well that Nerrix would lose what little mind he had when he heard, but… Honestly? Fuck Nerrix.

Zhou once again does not respond right away, falling into his trademark contemplative silence. He motions as if to speak - but his attention flickers away from Mach as he catches sight of something in the corner of his eyes. Around the corners of the storage containers, fourteen different submachine guns held by fourteen different unknown assailants are trained on the meeting in progress, encircling the entire proceeding. There is only enough time for a one-word swear before every single gun opens up on both Zhou’s side and Mach’s, no one spared from the storm of bullets. Zhou swears and begins barking orders at his guards as they seek out any kind of cover they can, returning fire as Mach’s synthetic guardians do.

Mach, for his part, took a few shots to the chest as he fell behind the cargo crate and turned on his hand laser. Fuck, his morph wasn’t really built for a fight. That’s why he hired the muscle, but… Well, he and Zhou combined were outnumbered. This couldn’t end well. Maybe he ought to play dead at some point? No, these guys were pros. Best to take some wild potshots and blindfire. So, hand laser over crate, he did just that.

The warehouse erupts into chaos as bullets and beams fly from all angles to perforate crates and morphs alike. The guardian synths rush past Mach, trying to find cover against the hailstorm and firing back at those who have clear shots at them, while Zhou and his backup are shot to ribbons. Almost as many swears as bullets are flying now, Zhou firing wildly any which way and outraged at this interruption.
“Did you set me up, Mach??” gunfire “Did you-” gunfire “-set me up???” gunfire “Gweilo piece of-” gunfire
Not all of the shots miss: a couple of the unknown assailants go down, bullets spraying wildly before weapons clatter and morphs thud against cargo containers, leaving still a dozen guns perforating those caught in the middle.

“If I did-” gunfire “Then why are they-” gunfire “Shooting me? And-” gunfire “Why would I shoot-” gunfire “Back? Just use your-” gunfire “Head, Zhou!” Said Mach, refusing to leave cover as he continued blindly firing the handlaser at the sounds of gunfire. He wasn’t trying very HARD to shoot back, but he was still trying. Sort of. His morph was a civilian synth, and outside of the Daitya, they weren’t exactly ‘tough’. He could definitely take a few shots, but honestly he wasn’t feeling like putting himself at risk for titan artifacts worth less than a million, or for Zhou.

Zhou doesn’t get the chance to reply before bullets perforate his morph, sending it tumbling back into a cargo container. The storm of bullets spares no one, and this time they all find their marks - even Mach’s guardian synths are cored, and Zhou’s guards can’t find cover that can protect them from the hail of gunfire, every one of them floating in the warehouse microgravity amid drops of their own blood.

Shit. These guys were fast. Mach was probably last man standing. And they had to know exactly where he was. No point in delaying the inevitable now… He pulled another crate around, the one holding some kind of coolant pump. Then, with some effort, he braced his back against the one crate and pushed off the other as hard as he could, letting it be his shield as he brought his handlaser around for a few more blind shots as he ran for the suicidal charge… Yeah, he know he was a goner now. Nerrix would back him up, and losing a three-mil deal wouldn’t be his fault anymore… Right? He hoped he at least took one guy down with him, but he was far from optimistic. The box didn’t help that much. Really, it just slowed him down too much. But he got off good shots on two of them. The third one he hit lost an elbow. But he heard the distinctly loud snap of a rail rifle behind him, and he saw battery acid spewing out of his metallic torso. He fired a fourth shot, and that was his power supply. He went dark. Into the void, as it were.

Simulspace
Speedwagon Motors

Mach didn’t expect his eyes to open again. He was sitting in the seat of an F-zero in progress, the seat leaned as far back as it would go. He stepped out. Yeah, it was Speedwagon motors. Tool chests, power equipment, lifts...The place that was more home than any apartment or house he’d ever lived in… But… It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t real, either. This place didn’t exist anymore. This… This was a sim. Did Nerrix actually go to the lengths necessary to retrieve his stack? He knew he was cored out there… Nobody but himself and Nerrix would have access to this, right?...

“... Hello? I… I know this is a sim… Nerrix?... Anyone?...”

“Congratulations, Mach - the plan was a complete success,” someone rasps in response, from the direction of a twencen classic car one lift over. His tools and safety gear are charmingly quaint, as is the hoodie, jeans, and steel-toed boots that comprise his attire. He sets a wrench down on a wheeled cart and removes a pair of large safety goggles as Mach makes eye contact with him, his grin that of a man who won the lottery.
“Now, I’m sure you have a great deal of questions, and we now have nothing but time,” the man says, arms out in a gesture between amiable and i’m harmless. “We have no further need for secrecy.”

Mach was confused. Plan? This was planned?... Did someone drug him or something that night? And who was this guy? Well… At least Mach had plenty of time. And the room was supposedly secure.
“Well… Obvious questions first, what plan? Wait, no, WHOSE plan? And… Why does it end with me in simulspace with… Well, I guess ‘Who are you’ should go on the question pile, too.”
He said, his stance guarded, but… Well. He wasn’t necessarily afraid. This just seemed so damn weird. He’d have to ask who leaked this simulspace to him or if Mach himself had been out long enough for them to reconstruct it from his memory.

The man chuckles to himself at ‘whose plan,’ grabbing a remote off of the wheeled cart and pointing it at a TV screen mounted to the nearby wall: “Funnily enough - it was yours.”
Instead of the news or auto shows, the TV screen loads a recording of someone sleeved in a synthmorph with Mach’s exact kenisics and voice, initially guarded in answering the question of “how would you like to be rid of Nerrix?” The video cuts through a rough montage of them formualting a plan - the use of Gray Ranks to prevent him remembering it, the cryptic invitations and efforts to dodge surveillance, formulating a plan to catch a 14K Triad boss and recruit him to the Shui Fong as a driver for their Mars-based contingent, moving slowly and carefully and covering the tracks behind him, and then setting up this very space, Mach telling them exactly how to lay it out to couch the blow of likely being murdered in the ensuing gunfight, before finding a place to stop.
“It ends here because Nerrix had to think you were dead and gone,” the man says. “You were indeed killed in the gunfight, according to plan, and now you are here, in a simulspace of a place you would be comfortable, hosted aboard-” the man changes the channel to a view of a long-range freighter, the Reginald Hargreeves, before zooming out to show its course from Qing Long to Mars.
“As for me...you can call me Lăobăn.”

“Lăobăn… Meaning you’re my boss. Wow… That plan kinda hurt, and I’m sorry I shot your boys up, but… Shit. It’s… Kinda hard to believe, y’know? I mean, I’ll still be working my ass off, but… I’m free. I’m FUCKING FREE!... Damn… Yeah. Okay. So… Only two questions. How long is our flight, and did I think to get a pirated copy of a racing sim in here? I’d feel like a real dumbass if I planned out all of that nonsense and forgot about the victory lap.”

He said, wiping a few simulated tears away. Shit. He fucking did it. Well, the Shui Fong fucking did it, but he planned this shit. He got out! It was like coming home to a fucking apple pie with an eagle standing over it, saluting a flag. On a scale from one to America he was WAY free, fucking AMERICA, FUCK YEAH levels of free. Okay, in practice, he probably wasn’t, but he fucking FELT like it. And in the end, that was the part that mattered.

“Our journey will take us a little over a month,” Lăobăn replies. “This simulspace is equipped with time dilation settings; while we are at 1:1 right now, you can easily dilate time to pass much faster in the real than in here. You also did have the foresight to load up Redline four to pass the time. Your victory lap is close - but we have one last thing to discuss first.”

Changing the channel on the shop TV again cuts back to a conversation between Mach and Lăobăn - just the two of them, the other conspirators having left. Lăobăn tells Mach of an organization - a conspiracy, more accurately - dedicated to preserving transhuman existence against the threat posed by TITAN remnants, transhumanity’s own folly, and threats unknown. Lăobăn tells Mach that this conspiracy orchestrated the whole plan, including finding him a place within the Shui Fong triad and a life outside of Nerrix, and that the conspiracy in turn could use Mach’s legendary piloting skills in combating the existential threats they face. Mach could see the wheels turn feverishly, the terror in his face as he agonized over the possibility that he’d fight Big Rob again… Then, a few deep breaths, and the him on screen sat down. “You give me the right car, explosives, and maybe an autocannon, I can be your wheelman.”

“So, how are you feeling now that you are free of Nerrix?”

“Good. Great. Amazing… And also kinda terrified looking back at that… I’m still gonna do it, but… Well. Taking the fight to Big Rob?... Yeah. Not an easy thought.”

“Absolutely, it isn’t. None of this is asked of you lightly; we’re holding on by our fingers, even ten years on, but our conspiracy has averted catastrophe more than once. You’ll be part of a team, stopping X-risks before they can even start. It’s going to be difficult, but you won’t be alone or without support. Resources may be tight and you may have to be clever, but not alone. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about that just yet: now’s the time for victory laps and champange.”

There it was, done. A complete memory.
So many were incomplete. Nanti knew that so well.
Why couldn’t he dream of Her… Well. Freedom was pleasant enough.
 
(Very sleepy; Tense switching ahead I'll edit to all present tense in the morning!)

It been almost a day- by the counts of anyone who still uses that as a metric and Vidar has pressed himself into a nook just outside what he can only describe as a 2030's themed 0g foam party. It's Something he's interested in watcing, but less interested in participating in, even if he didn't have erands to run. He clacks his brand new tongue ring against the back of his teeth as he searches the mesh the things he's going to need for mars; Wasp knife and whirling scourge, Specs, maybe one of those rebreather units.

[If you opt in for the mods instead it will only cost about 600 credits] Penny adds helpfully.
I only have 10k
[We're not moving to mars, you know.] She reminds him.
That is very true. He thought to himself. But the idea of having a finite amount of money, going back into a capitalist zone filled with him with dread and the illogical need to haord it.
[You could get these!] Penny added showing him the specs for the claw augmentation. It wasn't even considered a weapon in most habitats.
Penny. Please you can't bribe me.
[Look at this!] She said showing some one using claws to pop bubbles full of colored smoke, and also a twelve best everyday uses of CLAWS!
They're very kul, he admitted.

Spending “the night” with The Meg, whose name was Zhou Yuhan, has him feeling good. Maybe it was her or the sleep but the acute continuity jitters have died down finally. He can think whole complex thoughts without thinking about his aliveness levels or if he's Vidar or some one new who aught to change their name to Tuesday. He thinks for a moment instead about letting Zhou pierce his tongue, impromptu in the middle of their play- He's not kind to himself as he thinks about why he hadn't let himself enjoy some ones company. He's got a lot of reasons why- being a touched based bio weapon is one of them, the hot wet feeling he heart makes when he thinks about Five is the other. But even with all of that, Zhou had been good, some one he wanted to play with again. Some one he wanted to play pirates with again. Yesterday had been a shit show, but The Meg had done more good for him than he'd had since being reinstated and he was smitten.

He take a little time to crawl the forums unitl he finds some one willing to hook him up with a wasp knife. Its the first on a long list of erands;

666HEXIS[Whatcha gona get up to with that?]
2sday:[Oh, the usual and then going home to my little girl.] He sends, sharing a picture of chubs as a baby in a little party hat.
666HEXIS[Oh my god- you're daughter is beautiful.]
2sday[Thank you.]

He waits and the wasp knife beholder arives, in a festish pod aesthetically similar to Marcu's guard, but died chrome and wearing nothing but a yellow speedo, eye pin pricked on drive- or something else. They try hard to get him to come into the foam party with them, and realizes this friend has used the favor as the segue into a play date.

“No I'm good, Sorry, I don't- Think we're into the same thing.”

“suit yourself~” They say before disappearing into the foam. His spot is no longer as isolated or clear of foam as the party esculates and he moves on.

[You can paint them,] Penny tells him showing pictures of various claw owners and their ombre effect paint jobs.
Maybe when I get back to locus.
[Treat. Your. Self.]
Penny please.
[Boss listen. You'll love them.]

She wasn't wrong but the idea of spending all that time in a medtank sit ill with his deeper old fashioned inhibitions. Candy crush would only keep him occupied for so long.

[Wich is worse, bringing a gun to a gun fight while whering a bulky winter jacket and a rebrether on your back- or playing UC9 in a bucket of water for twelve hours?]
Compelling. Tell me more.
[And then you get these!]
She sent him another video of a demo for self defense with claws. They both knew she had sealed the deal.

To find a good mod shop he asked The Meg, who teased him that the tongue peircing just wasn't enough. She was quick to make a recommendation.

BulwarkBess:[What are you getting done?]
2sday:[Nothing fun. Maybe Claws.]
BulwarkBess: [you're not using your imagination. Show me when you're done. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ]

He hesitates for moment, not sure if he's going to have time to meet up with her again but more than willing to send some XP-- Oh god they could just trade XP after he went back to Locus. He'd forgotten he was living in the future.

2sday; [Now my imagination is working too good. Yes. Of course.]

The ExAug shop he rolled into was the same one Eppie had, and he recognized it vaguely from watching the fiasco on the tapes. The crew was as tender hearted as they were extreme and didn't judge him as he sheepishly asked if they would be willing to take credits for the augmentations he wanted. They seemed happy to, as the rep/credit exchange was often difficult and awkward and they understood. He spent not a small amount of time talking to one of them about NeonTattoos wich he was pleased to hear were coming back into style. He describes, when prompted, his look back in the 40's for the kid who seems thrilled to get a first hand description. And shows him a bunch of historical recreation looks he's worked on for clients in the past-- apparently there was a clique for that. He asked if he had seen the 2030s foam party and Vidar said he hadn't, not wanting to be a kill joy.

“Aw you'll be in the tank long enough that it will probably be over.”

“They'll be others.”

And then came the tank: 6 hours of UC9 with Rj was all he he had in him though. RJ was just on another level when it came to min/maxing the game mechanics and it was tough to keep up with that play style.

“I know this is going to sound crasy,” Vidar said before they parted, “But I think game Eppie reminds me of real Eppie-- like a lot.”

“Oh worm? I don't see it.”

After he tried to get some work done. But all he got was frustration. Maybe it was the tank. Not that he could feel much- not that it was unpleasent. But sensory deprivation always made him squirely. The mooks who had bashed into the Anora borellis had come out of the wood work one by one in way that was delibratly obscure. He tried all his best tricks and ran the footage again- but he got lost in the heavy shifting of bodies acrorss the camera as the flow of traffic waxed and waned. There was a patern to foot traffice, and not being able to find the intel he wanted he let himself indulge in it. Something in his mind did so much love to crunch on crowd scenes, almost as much as raw maths. Sometimes he thought, maybe he had some sort of responsibilyt not to look at the cameras the way he did-- He did not want to think deep thoughts in the tank but they surfaced. He was dead. And the sensory deprivation didn't help the fixation slip away as intrusive back ground noise.

M/w sleeved egos like he could sleeve a body. He was a corpse worn like a mask. And sometimes he couldn't help but think when spent time on the cameras or anythign other than candy crush he was feeding what he'd become exactly what it wanted.

[This is boring.]
My extential dread or the cameras?
[Fucking both. I want a raise! ]
Penny. We're anarchists.
[Then do something fun- look I've made a whole buncha dolls for this summers Martian fashion. Why don't you take a break and look at them.]

He suffered her showing them to him. She may have come into their reinstatement wipped but she was still penny and sometimes he was more sure that she was the same Muse he'd known than that if he was the still the same man who'd had her.

[Listen you'd look great in something like this] She showed him a lilac one piece with gauzy elements designed to catch the wind of float in micro gravity. [I think lilac is a great color for your current morph!]
That is lingerie Penny.
[Maybe so. But its perfectly chic to wear and you've worn less recently in public.]
Private space is a luxary the scum don't need. And I'm not wearing that.
[What about this?] She shared something a little more mens fashion, with elements she thought might align more to his old fashioned sensibilities.
I think I'd rather die than look that much like jeff beszos. What do the regular people wear.
She reluctantly showed him some street fashion shots of the Barsoomian.
That is the coolest jumpsuit I have ever seen. Its like part fucking david lynch's Dune and then like 30% MLP.
[I had to fucking hunt down both of those refrences, you absolute Antique.]
Keep up, you want that raise or what?
[Augh, we'll you can't actually fire me so Fucking look how cute you'd be, I'm just saying] She said sending him one last edited image of his current morph in a bussiness suit in a genetle orange ombre.
That looks like some Disney executive bullshit circa 2070, Penny blease.
[FINE! Be a goblin. Be the most obvious punk in punks town.]
I will!

He saved all the looks he did like though and made a note in the tacnet;

Heliotrope; [I've been trying to find out where our party crashers earlier came from- the ones on the ship, and I've got nothing. I'm coming up real empty handed, spent most of the time during all that a bit brain addled so if anyone can rember anything or if we can get Abby to take a stab at it that might be good.]

He then went about compiling his indepth notes for Starglass. He was capable of making very tidy and thorough reports and this one was no different. Maybe it would help. He took another break and started compiling his data burst to send back to locus. He filled it with some of his XP from the larp-- he took a bit to relive some of it as he did. And he also included the Wyrmwood Launch instructions wich had the specs, requirments for adapting the game. 8Thframe's muse suplied the document and he was surprised at its heft.

[This is some nerd bullshit, boss.]
Well take a look and let me know if there's anything that's going to really hinder us throwing our own game together on Locus.
[The processing power for it is not small, its going to be expensive. Even for anarchists. You're going to have to get some one with access to a lot of processing power excited about it.]
It doesn't have to happen next week.
[Well that's good cause you'll probably still be on on mars in a week. Dream big ~]
Live. Laugh. Love.
[You got it!]

She'd just gotten him to joking admit to living so he just sat on that for a moment and she let him. He played another Mission of UC9 and then went back to the mesh. He hit up the local art collectives, searching for anything botanical and finding a an assortment of artists going in all the directions one could take a plant with the all or nothing imagination of the scum barge. What caught his eye of the back was a disjointed garden of modified orchids whose flowers blossomed into perfect recreation of different types of unmentionable parts, several with built in pixelation in the design. The Coop in question was called PistolPUMPED and the person he was able to get an introduction to was name Gentle Green and her neural text was asmr soft like a feather.

GentleGreen;[we really haven't figured out a good presentation for them yet. Jax thinks they're perfect for dialy use and that any kind of gallery setting is pedestrian but I think they need some sort of framing.]
2sday:[Galleries are a big no for me too. 0g instalations are tough, especially if they need to be livable spaces too. And espeically cause everyone is going to touch them- or fuck them.]
GentleGreen;[Don't get me started on catching people trying to fuck the flowers!] She said in good natured exasperation. He included her and her co-op's work along with other goings on in the scum scene in the data blast for his fam back home. He hoped it would be enough to convince them that he was, infact on a fun trip to see his fake boyfriend.

Finally the tank drained and he didn't notice so much of a difference until he forgot to breath while one of the crew was offering to fabricate some nail paint for him. He declined, if he had to use them on some one he'd be leaving behind enough DNA never mind leaving behind something like colored nail polish traces that could ID him on the spot. It would be very cute though and Penny continued to make color suggestions until he caved.

"On the house," Said ExAug who'd been almost as forceful as Penny with their encouragement.

And that was how he came into the possession of lilac claws to match his Hello kitty Ak47. It woudl be several days later before he realized they had been coated in semi permenant laquer and not the anil polish he thought of in his mind when the word was said, and that he would not have to remember to removed the polish before kiling a man and having to worry about incriminating evidence.

[I really like lilac on you!] Penny told him.
I'm a purple mufasa now. Don't tell the fury police okay?
[We're anarchists, I would never talk to a cop!!!]
Penny I hate to break it to you, but you've talked to a cop before.
[NO! Boss, why? What?]
I worked for the precinct. Don't tell the anarchists.
[You're secret is safe with me! I'm glad you like the claws, I knew you would!]
When you're right your right!

He had a hard time getting a hold of the specs he wanted after that. And the lady flaked on him. He didn't like down voting people but flaking was just plain anoying. The second time panned out and the Synth seemed eager to off load them, hardly saying more than, hello and goodbye.

He needed a joint.

2sday{pm to Devin}; [Devin what the fuck is your 20?]
2sday; {pm to Devin}[Do ye hath thine Weed, lad?]

the second bit sent in the over done fake icelandic accent he had used to play Ti in Wyrmwood.

2sday{PM to Abby}: I think you aught to have sobered up by now? How are you doing? Remember any of your birthday?

He just needed to pick and find a neuro toxin for his wasp blade and he'd be ready to go, but he was still feeling that Credits in his pocket anxiety and the stepping on the edge of his rep embarrassment. Maybe he'd wait till he got to mars, see what the goblins there could hook him up with.
 
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Devin's first order of business was making a story on why he was packing up to Mars. He blamed it mostly on Vidar, because it was easy, and nobody would push too hard, but he could tell they knew it wasn't the whole truth.
Fucking opsec.
Fucking Mars.
He spent some time with Armand and Kostya and tried to put off thinking about Mars, even as the Grim whispered that time was running out to prep.
Devin: It's not like I need a lot, right?
Devin: A different morph so I don't have to worry about toasting mine, and some weed
the Grim: You still need to get that stuff tho! It takes time!!
Devin: :/ :/ :/
the Grim: Don't make faces at me 'cause I'm right and you don't like it
Devin: :/ :/ :/
the Grim: I would trade you to a nanoswarm for a corn chip
Devin: that's weird 'cause you don't even have a mouth
the Grim: I'd feed it to a Martian hypercorp exectutive
Devin: WOW OK
the Grim: P U H L E A S E
Devin: I'M GOING I'M GOING
"Hey, Kostya," Devin said. "Do you happen to have any blueprints for weed and wine I could borrow?"
They shared a room in the Motherfuck, which was cramped according to any planetside standards but positively luxurious by scum ones. The three of them were a little high and wedged into the same hammock. Kostya frowned at him.
"Maybe. What's in it for me?"
"My undying love and affection, and also my sanity on a week long trip to Mars?"
"I already have the first two," Kostya said. "And I know an equally good way to keep the second." Devin sighed.
"Kostya. Kost'ka. Please."
"Hmmm. I don't think I want to help you disappear for a while," Kostya said. Devin frowned at him, and then looked at Armand.
"Don't look at me, I'm on his side," Armand said.
"I don't even want to go!"
"So don't," Kostya said. "Stay, and then we'll all be happy."
"I promised," Devin said. "I can't let Vidar go to Mars by himself. He's two hundred years old!"
"He is not," Armand said.
"He's one hundred years old. My point still stands."
"Fiiiine," Kostya said. "You owe me for the emotional trauma though."
"Alright, alright. You make a hard bargain," Devin said, and kissed Kostya's cheek.

Next on Devin's list, and rather trickier, was a morph, particularly one that could handle unterraformed Mars. Fortunately, he knew a guy. Charley was one of the best genehackers in the swarm, though his tolerance for Devin was not great.
the_Magpie: Charley, my dude!
spaceace: oh, it's you
spaceace: i can't make your dick any bigger
the_Magpie: haha
the_Magpie: I'm in the market for a theseus morph
spaceace: don't y'all have like, 3 of those?
the_Magpie: yeah, but like, this is for a side gig
spaceace: so I don't even want to know. got it
the_Magpie: you're the best charley!!!
spaceace: obviously
the_Magpie: 😘
spaceace: don't...don't ever do that again
the_Magpie: I'll get you to love me one of these days
spaceace: stop
the_Magpie: as you wish

Devin {pm to Vidar}: i'm in the motherfuck. i got u bro
 
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Simulspace
Unknown Crisis - The Zookeepers of Tlao
(Collab Post with TrashRabbit TrashRabbit )​

Rushing Jaws had just finished loading into The Zookeepers of Tlao, an hour into his session playing the hit sim game Unknown Crisis, when the request to join hits his UI - from Vidar.
“Shit, wouldn’t’ve figured you for a sim gamer-” Rushing Jaws says, granting the request. He has loaded up his specs for a soldier-class NASA operative, well-armed, indistinguishable from a Fury, and appropriately well-statted for combat - and making sure to have on his team the characters who can handle the science and tech side of things; Nikki has exactly the sort of mischievous streak he enjoys to compliment her unparalleled hacking skills, and Eppie…
There was something funny about Eppie that he can’t quite get the shape of, beyond her soft demeanor, unrivalled intelligence, and social grace being weirdly familiar.

[Ayyy Viddy! You’re just in time for the creature feature!! What’re your stats, my sape??]

[YO! By creature feature....do you mean......Zookeepers of Tlao?!? Hell yes! And I’m an Infiltrator with hard light cross classing. I’ve got a sord mod.] he sent the corresponding mod data so that Rj’s game would accept his weapon of choice.

[Oh fuck yes, you’re gonna fit in perfectly] Rushing Jaws replies; the foreboding dome of the Tlao facility looms large just past them, police cordons in place and the UC9 supplies all laid out for everyone to get their kits ready. Having already turned himself into a walking arsenal, Rushing Jaws pops open the weapons crate as the mod completes loading, revealing an impressive selection of swords.

“So, we got some modern lookin monofilament swords, some classic swords, and then some fuckin wild shit in here - what’s your weapon of choice?”

“You ever heard of a sharkatar?” he asked with a laugh. He pulled out the wild looking weapon with a vanna white flourish.

“Wh- what the hell is that thing???” Rushing Jaws asks, the question forced through incredulous laughter.

“It’s the fastest way to take out your own eye I’ve ever fucking seen- Completely fucking useless but just a lot of fun if your like in the mood to punch some Jiaans with a fish shaped knife.” He smiles and equips it and makes it swim through the air with a motion of his arm, “,,,baby shark dododododoo ddooo-”

“-holy fuck am I glad this is the safe zone-” Rushing Jaws manages to say between fits of laughter. “Fuckin shit - aint that ditty older than you? Fucking outstanding - I cannot wait to see you take out some fuckin snakedogs with that thing-”
It takes Rushing Jaws a solid twenty seconds to suppress his laughter: “holy shit, okay, I got Eppie n’ Nikki in tow - you reckon they make for good support or should we swap ‘em?”

“Listen,” he said un-equipping the shark blade but keeping it in his inventory, “This is my favorite dating sim. I wouldn’t know a tactic if it bit me. ” He pulled a high level customized Kriegsmesser with a black blade and matte lilac and black handle out of the crate and disappeared it into his inventory along with a couple grenades, an omni tool, a crowbar, and a box of cookies.

“Outstanding,” Rushing Jaws says with another laugh. “Fuckin, okay - I’m loaded for bear but I’m still real out of it from the meds keepin me from hurting like hell back in the real, so my strat is to cover Eppie n Nikki while they work their magic and just blow away whatever Eppie can’t work her fuckin princess magic on. Sound good?”

This gets a good laugh out of him, “Sounds good. I’m the other way around, I do dumb shit until Goody starts spouting lines about how he should have brought Cathal instead.”

“Dude I feel that - my MO would be to just shoot my way down but if you take out a critter that aint some bioterror shit, Eppie gets real mad. It’s almost as bad as the fuckin unwinnable level.”

Vidar nods along because that's how Game-Eppie is.
“Oh fuck the unwinnable level!” he says with real hurt and grudge, “Also I’ve never played with Nikki this is going to be fun. Fun fucking fact; The tech in this game is old enough I know how to use it and- Oh one more fucking mod hold on.” Another mod arrives in the mod folder for verification and this one removes maps.

“Oh shit true-” Rushing Jaws says. “Well Eppie n Nikki are kitted out, lets go neutralize some snake dogs.”

“Lets roll.”

-”Fuckin’ real glad I figured out the tranq bullets-” Rushing Jaws says, rifle moving as fast as he can turn it to splash the lightning-fast snakedogs with capsule rounds, nailing one just as it lunches for Vidar-

-The Gribbles began to swarm, as gribbles were wont to do, and Eppie is screaming, Nikki is pulling on Rj’s belt and Vidar pops open the bag of cookies.
“I fucking got this one.”-

-“I FUCKING HATE THIS ASSHOLE-” Rushing Jaws shouts, dodging a set of chomping jaws as long as he is tall. Despite knowing damned well that Asshole the Apex Predator shows up not long after Eppie’s nervous dialogue cue, it always manages to get the drop on him, and soaks up his non-lethal rounds like an angry sponge. “FUCKIN- GONNA BURN THROUGH A WHOLE CLIP OF TRANQS TRYNA BRING THIS THING DOWN”-

-Vidar held very still in the Adrothy5 Stealth Walker pen and shut his eyes, the damn thing worked on some fantasy quantum logic and could only teleport when observed. He takes the tranq shot from his hip like a cowboy.-

-the timing had to be perfect to pull this off: Nikki could hack the hardlight barrier systems, but if the superthermite charge went off too soon it would bring down every horror on this level rushing to the dinner bell - which could just as easily happen if any of them were spotted before Nikki was done. The four of them are perfectly silent and almost utterly still, Umbral Stalkers prowling among
the brush-
“Ah-choo!!”
-Rushing Jaws feels every simulated muscle clench as Nikki’s sneeze draws the gold eyes of the stalkers right to them-

-”EPPIE BLEASE” Vidar shouts with all the force of a real dad who thinks he’s about to watch a real NPC get eaten but short nosed eavers creature. She holds out her hand for it to sniff and it chirps. He gets there just in time to grab her by the waist and away from its terrible chameleon like tongue.-

-“Ancestors love ya, but you are real good at gettin’ yourself nearly killed,” Rushing Jaws chides Eppie, treating lacerations dealt to her in that narrow escape from the pack of stinger hounds. She got real lucky back there: those barbed tongues can deliver a nasty paralytic toxin, and another dose would have made an already rough run that much harder-

-Vidar threw up a hard light wall and stepped back as the cadaver dogs slammed into it;
“Puppies!” Nikki says, blissful to the level of danger their no.
“No thankyou! They’re gonna get the Shark.”
“Babby shark Doo dooo doodo doo” Nikki sings, the Ai having picked up the song after two or three of Vidars patient lessons.-


-Rushing Jaws may have packed in an utterly ridiculous assault rifle, but with the pack of weaponized viper-wolves bearing down on them, the decision to equip it with a micro-missile launcher and explosive rounds is vindicated.
Eppie knows these boys aren’t innocent animals.
Rushing Jaws swapped firing modes.
Now the real fun begins-

-Watching Vidar hit peak Sord-goblin Async video-game-math flow is mesmerizing, Its all over quickly but for a brief series of moments he is everywhere that the cybernetic mini Allosaurus are not and then in what seems a single motion that carries four steps, his blade flashing in three long curves they all hit the floor headless.
He stop and breathes and then laughs at the look RJ give shim, “I can only pull shit like that off in video games, I swear-”

-the things streaming out of the breach are way too much like strains of exsurgents Rushing Jaws has fought before, but his bullets put them down just as handily. B-b-bam, b-b-bam, b-b-bam, each three-round burst perfectly placed and rewarded with a spray of viscera and the thuding of a carcass against the steel floor. The lights are low, the alarms are screaming, and the others have gone down into the heart of darkness just below, Rushing Jaws putting all other distractions out of his mind, perfectly in his element as he deals swift retribution to the things that try to hunt down his comrades-

-Eppie taps furiously on the old style keyboard, where the access to the Zoo’s massive servers reside.
“I think he’s just cranky,” She says while vidar watches the door. Somewhere down the hall he hears Nikki laugh and one of Rj’s war songs.
“Cranky. Right.” He says with a snort.
“He says he asked his friend to come help him and then they just took the bio weapons and left him behind.”
“Well fuck those guys.”
“Yuh. Poor thing.”
Sometimes doing a mission well was anticlimactic, and that was true in UC9 and in life. She talked the Ai down shortly before Rj destroyed the last bio weapon.-

-RJ jumps well back from the spray of acid blood that gushes from the final monstrosity as it collapses to the floor, lowering his gun and scanning for any further targets; none come, and the passage is silent but for Eppie and Vidar bantering in the core chamber. He doesn’t turn his back as he paces toward the chamber, waiting for another wave that doesn’t come in order to guarantee that this really is the end of the level.
“So, emergent AI takes the only deal it can get in order to escape corporate slavery then gets shafted when the fuckers who stole the weapons skip town without ‘em, eh?”
“Yeah!!!” Nikki says, her tone that of an indignant pup who knows injustice when she hears it.
“Hey Nikki - can you hack in to the station’s long range comm arrays?”
“Yeeessssss…?” Nikki replies, curious.
“D’you reckon you could open up a tightbeam to the ship with the LRC array?”
“Yeeessssss…?” Nikki replies again, starting to pick up on his plan.
“And do you think we got the bandwidth to give our friend here a way outta this shitheap?”
Nikki just cackles, cracking her knuckles and getting to work.
“You only get that option if you bring Nikki along,” Rushing Jaws says, nodding to Vidar with a big ol grin on his face.

“Oh worm?”

“Yuh. No mercurial left behind.”
 
Last edited:
Euphemia "Eppie" Cross​

The minute Rushing Jaws divulged that he was critically injured and alone on a ship that was far from anyone he actually knew, Eppie knew exactly what she had to do, because it was the right thing to do, and knew that it was going to take facing her greatest fear to do it.

She glares out the window of the Peculiar Taste of Silence at the Mother Fuck, which isn’t too far away, but is far enough that Eppie’s stomach churns at the thought of 0g, or being in open space for whatever amount of time it will take for her feet to land on the Mother Fuck... which is probably a 0g ship, her stomach both crawling up into her throat and sinking like a stone.

She puts her hands on her hips as she stares daggers at a ship that really hasn’t done anything to deserve it, pondering her options with furrowed brows and pursed lips. It would probably be faster to take one of the jetpacks that she sees on the wall and jet over, since she wouldn’t have to wait, but since she’d literally rather put her head through a nanobot garbage disposal than do anything that puts her that close to open space, that option is absolutely off the table. Waiting for a shuttle is her best bet, but she has no idea when it will come to this station, nor if it will take her to the Mother Fuck.

“Damn, Rosa, you glare any harder and you’ll pierce a hole in the hull.”

She looks away from the far away ship, swallowing her nausea as she turns to a scum seated about a yard away from her. A blunt is burning sluggishly between their clenched teeth, which seem to have been filed into points. Eppie crosses her arms, leaning against the window as she faces him, “Do you know when the shuttle will be back? I need a ride to the Mother Fuck.”

They whistle, “It’ll be a wait, Rosa.. You’re looking at about forty-five minutes to an hour. You’re welcome to take a jetpack, so long as you plan on bringing it back.”

“No offence, but I’d literally rather kill myself than take a jetpack across that much open space. Thanks for the offer, though.”

“Damn, okay! That’s a lot of bad vibes there - I worked hard on these, y’know? They won’t break down on you and leave you stranded.”

Eppie looks out the window, trying to seek the void of space for any visual of the shuttle, “I absolutely believe you. I got spaced during TITAN bullshit during the Fall, so I like to keep my distance from open space when I can avoid it.”

They wince sympathetically, “Damn. I’m sorry. Hey, look - I’ll call the pilot, and see if he can haul ass back. How’s that?”

She smiles, “Don’t be sorry. But I’d appreciate it, thanks.”

Her eyes shift back to space, pulling up her message on her entopics as she tunes out the scum barger speaking to the pilot through a comm line. She reopens her message with Rushing Jaws, and reminds herself that it is worth it to power through the gnawing anxiety. Her hands shake and her palms sweat, but she knows that if she had been injured like Rushing Jaws had described, she wouldn’t want to be all alone in a simulspace while she recovered.

The shuttle takes about twenty minutes to return, which she spends setting up some meetings for supplies and mods before their next mission, and the pilot greets Eppie and waves her onboard. The scum barger from before slaps her on the back, “You’ve got this, Rosa.”

She nods with a confidence she absolutely does not feel as she climbs onboard. The minute she secures her seatbelts she closes her eyes, trying to ignore the sensation of losing gravity as they disconnect from the Peculiar Taste of Silence and hit 0g, trying to ignore how her hair is lifting up to float, how she is lifting up out of her seat, her stomach rolling, every thought in her mind screaming about how close she is to space - oh God, she forgot to check if she has an oxygen mask anywhere nearby - what if the glass breaks - what if the airlock fails - what if -

“Hey, uh, you good? You’re, uh, looking a little… Mauve. Maybe on the gray-ish side?”

She opens her eyes, forcing herself to look only at the pilot and not at space, “What?”

“I was trying to make a joke - you look like you’re going to be sick, but since you’re, well. So pink. You’re not really green, you’re more this… ashy gray-mauve colour.” There is a beat of silence, “I didn’t say it was a good joke.”

She laughs, a sharp exhale that’s almost a bark, “No, it’s - it was good. I just… I get really bad 0g nausea and anxiety.”

“Oh, damn, sorry bout that. I get nervous people sometimes, usually people just passing through the swarm. If it helps, you can hold my hand? Only if you want. Won’t hurt my feelings if you say no.”

“Really? Gotta warn you, my palms are sweating like a motherfucker.”

“Can’t be worse than cleaning shit up if you blow chunks.”

Eppie laughs again, taking her hand as she closes her eyes, trying to focus only on the texture of the pilot’s calluses and the slightly raised patterns of scarification on the back of her palms.

The pilot gives her hand a squeeze, “I’m Maisie, by the way. Want to hear about some bullshit gossip to distract you?”

“I’m Eppie. And blease.”

Maisie obliges, recalling a rather juicy tale involving one of her lover’s, which helps fixate Eppie on asking questions and prompting side stories rather than fixating on her proximity to space, and before she knows it, Maisie is speaking to some people on the Mother Fuck for permission to board.

Eppie opens her eyes to look at Maisie, who is grinning. Maisie sucker punches Eppie in the arm, “Look at you! You made it! Still feeling sick?”

Eppie swallows a bit, aware of her nausea and anxiety but no longer overwhelmed by it, “I… Yeah, but I’ll live. Thank you so much for letting me crush your hand for the ride.”

Maisie smiles, then winks, “Any time. Add me on the mesh, okay? My story only gets wilder from where I left off.”

“Oh, you can bet on it. Thanks for the ride.”

“Take care!”

Eppie grabs the handholds on the shuttle to propel herself through the airlock, her stomach flipping. She’s so close now that she’ll be pissed if she pukes, so she forces down bile in her throat with nothing but willpower. She looks to one of the scum by the airlock, and asks, “Hey, can you point me to the tanks? My friend is borrowing one.”

The scum points her down the hall, and Eppie 0g swims down the hall, taking hold of edges only when she begins to lose momentum to keep herself going. Eppie catches herself on the doorframe of the medbay and pulls herself inside. The room is clean, with a scum working on their entopics by the glazed look in their eye. There are three meditanks, only one of which are occupied, and the state of the person inside makes her suck in a breath through her teeth.

High caliber bullets have punched multiple, sizeable holes into the morph, with most of lower torso shredded so deep that Eppie can see some of the writhing internal organs. The morph is that of a woman built powerfully - it carries the practical strength of a soldier, and Eppie knows immediately, to look that strong and to have lived through that much physical trauma, that the morph must be a fury.

Eppie turns to the scum barger, “Hi, my name is Eppie. Would you mind if I strap in beside you? I’m going to join my friend in his simulspace.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Eppie thanks them, gripping some handhold to pull herself to the couch and strap herself down to the couch. Seze, hook me up to Rushing Jaws’ simulspace, please?

[Loading you in.]

Eppie closes her eyes, and waits to see what sort of world Rushing Jaws has waiting for her.
 
Simulspace
The Puget Sound, Nowhere In Particular
(Collab Post with CelticSol CelticSol )​

She does not remember Earth; she was barely five when her parents packed up everything they owned to leave as fast as possible, so what few memories she can recollect of the world she was born on are fragmented at best, but most have been erased by the passage of time. Her mother had allowed Eppie to experience her homeworld through XP recordings she had taken before the world crumbled around them - feet in soft sand, the ocean lapping at her feet, the sun, gloriously warm sun on her skin - hiking through a forest (a forest!), surrounded by the chirps of birds and the sharp but soothing smells of the evergreens - the dark stillness under a sky full of stars, far from the cities that polluted their shine -

It is only through these borrowed memories, and her recollection from cheap imitations of the same experience through candles and perfumes, that she is able to recognize the smell of pine and sea salt before she even opens her eyes. She can hear a gentle sound of waves against the shore, simulated recordings of critters in the brush in the distance. She feels gravity settle heavily over her body, giving herself presence here that brings her so fully and completely back into herself that she cannot suppress the sigh of relief, her worries washed away like the water erodes the stones of the shore.

She opens her eyes to a beach by the ocean, with calm waters and clear skies above her. She raises a hand to shield her eyes from the setting sun, but pauses as she recognizes the tattoos across the back of her hand as those she had painstaking carved into her birth morph. She takes a moment to take stock of herself - she is Eppie, and every tattoo she seeks is imprinted on the skin she wears in the simulspace. She releases a breath she didn’t know that she had been holding, a weight on her shoulders that she had forgotten the burden of, suddenly removed.

Walking across the beach, Eppie notices, perhaps by her subconscious thought or perhaps Seze working to make the coming interaction easier, that she has spawned in a wetsuit, her bare feet padding across the sand. She searches the water for disturbances from the uplift that swims beneath the surface, but finds none. The simulspace is not… the highest quality she has ever seen, the space fogging out in the distance to mask an incapacity to render the scene further than that distance. She squints, sure she might be able to see something -

Spout!

In the darkened water, she spots the curve of an enormous black dorsal fin, a splash of water as he rises to the surface of the water to breathe, perhaps to peek a look at her, at the edge of where the simulspace degrades to a thick fog. She smiles, looking down to her feet at the edge of the water and spawning a dock long enough to lead into the deeper water. She walks across the length, trying to keep track of him in the dark waters, but knowing it to be impossible.

Back when she lived on Europa, as a volunteering activity to help her cope with her PTSD, Eppie had worked at the uplift rehabilitation center in her hab. Uplifts of all kinds were treated there - those who were disabled by a botched uplifting, those who were traumatized by the fall, or just people needing a kinship during a time of intense mourning - and of those uplifts, there were numerous neo-cetaceans, due to Europa’s freezing cold water. Most uplifts initially were wary of her - which, given how many humans had likely mistreated them, was not unwarranted - but through learning their cultures, and learning about the practices that mattered to them, helped her bond with them.

Among the neo-cetaceans, the most effective way to establish goodwill and friendship was through song. It was the easiest way to reach all of them, no matter what difficulties they faced. And so, the human volunteers adopted an old swedish practice of utilizing herding calls - kulning - in order to call them to the edge of the water for dinner, medication, or even just conversation. It brought them a middle ground through which to bond through song.

Eppie clears her throat, before she cups her hands around her mouth, and begins to sing.



Rushing Jaws couldn’t help but be impressed by the sape’s initiative: here she was, requesting permission to enter the simulspace after a surprisingly short time following the situation with Stranger Tides. While he’d had his muse and the mesh for company, it just wasn’t the same as having someone around that he could share his space with; neo-cetaceans are not solitary beings, and though he would be hard pressed to admit it, the solitude of the simulspace had begun to chafe. He let her in, curious to see what she would do and how she would approach, even considering swimming up to the dock she spawned in and going for a breach to drench her-

-but that was before she began to sing.

This simulspace is a fairly accurate representation of reality, and so he has to come to the surface in order to hear that she is singing. His first surfacing is too fast to hear much beyond recognizing that she is in fact singing, and it takes a spyhop out of the water to catch a good few notes. What he hears is enough to get him to swim over to the dock with all speed, and not to interrupt her with aquatic antics. He has his muse alter the simulation’s settings in order to clearly hear every note, even underwater, and needs only seconds to arrive and surface, swimming in place with his head above the water to take in every note.

Māzǔ, you hearing this???
[Loud and clear!!]
What the fuck??? This is beautiful???
[Yeah!! It’s not a pre-recording or anything, it’s her actual singing voice you’re hearing.]
Fuck outta here- really???
[I will not - and yes.]
What’s she singin?? It sounds familiar?
[It’s an ancient song called a Kulning. It sounds familiar because the metapods on Ceres have adapted it into songs that you can hear over long distances.]
Wow, just- just fucking listen to her.

He treads water there for as long as she serenades to him, smiling a neo-orca smile and even singing along where he could. Any thought of mischief banished from his mind, he takes a moment to take in the sape standing at the dock: she is really goddamned pink, covered with tattoos, and radiating a sense of friend that sets him at the most ease he’s been since this day began. Even her eyes have an intensity to them… Rushing Jaws feels a genuine sense of enchantment, between her beautiful song and the intensity of her gaze on him. She finishes her song, and his applause comes in the form of neo-orca screeching and a mighty slap of the water with his tail.

“Well shit, if only more sapes greeted me like that!!” He exclaims. “Hey there, lil pink - what brings ya to my simulated paradise here?”

“You should meet better sapes, if that’s the case!” She grins down to the orca that has appeared in the water in front of the dock as she crouches down to sit on the edge of the pier. The water is cool, but not so much so to leave her uncomfortable, and she kicks her feet to create minor wakes on the surface, “And I ended up here because, one, I hate zero gravity more than anything else that exists in this universe; two, I heard that there was a neo-orca in this simulated paradise that got hurt really bad, do you know him?”

She smiles sympathetically, eyebrows slightly with concern, “I figured you might want some company, if that’s okay with you?”

“Aww shucks, I think that’d be alright,” Rushing Jaws says, prior to steering his huge head in either direction as if searching for something: “unless you know about any other neo-orcas in here though, ‘guess you must be talkin’ about me?”

“Well, that depends. Did you happen to be sleeving a fury earlier? Specifically one with shredded intestines that I saw floating in a tank?”

“Ah, yep- that’d be me,” Rushing Jaws says with a laugh. “Last op got, uh, pretty rough - had to take some chances in order to get everyone out. Shame I had to miss out on this past job, but I gotta say bein’ in here beats the hell outta floating in a meditank for hours on end with nowhere to go, know what I mean?”

“Agreed,” Her brows furrow deeper, and she leans over to place a hand on his head, the texture perfectly smooth and slick against her palm, “You sure you’re holding out okay? That was a nasty wound that I saw back there, and being alone after that couldn’t have been nice.”

Her hand is tiny and warm against his head, and despite himself Rushing Jaws softly kicks into the contact: “Ah- yeah, I’ll live. It wasn’t fun, for sure, but it also ain’t my first time. Between some suppressors and my own patch jobs, I managed until they could find me a meditank - at which point I went under for a bit. Māzǔ set up this space for me while the nanobots dealt with the worst of it, n’ here I am now, under anesthesia so I don’t gotta feel phantom pains while I’m in here.”

“All that said, it’s nice havin’ company.”

“Glad to hear it. Also glad to be here. This is beautiful,” She idly runs her hand over his head in a circuit, from just above the upper lip of his mouth to the top curve of his skull, “They’re doing good work, from what I could see. It looked… bad, but not as bad as I’m sure that it was.”

She pauses a moment, then continues in a cautious tone, “How long have you been...you know. Working for…” She makes air quotes with her fingers, “‘The Office’.”

“Exact dates n’ times gotta stay classified, but - I got a few gigs under my belt,” Rushing Jaws answers. “Well, ‘lot more than a few, my background is violence, but specifically for the Office? Just a few at this point. How ‘bout you?”

“This is my first rodeo, actually. I was a gatecrasher prior to picking up some work with the Office.”

“No shit? Never actually met a bona fide gatecrasher before! What sorta work d’you do on the other side of the gates before joinin’ up?”

“I was - am - a xenoanthropologist. Kind of a scientist of… Everything to do with aliens. Culture, biology, language…” She trails off, looking out onto the foggy horizon of the simulspace, “I can’t do it anymore, though. Now I do all my work on the relics, specimens, and aliens they bring back to this side of the gate. It’s what I’ll be doing whenever I’m not doing work for the Office.”

Rushing Jaws gently pushes himself a little closer to Eppie, picking up on something in her tone. He is tempted to ask what prompted the change, but thinks better of it: “Sounds kinda familiar, actually. I used to be special forces for Direct Action - biggest n’ baddest defense hypercorp in the inner system. Then the Fall happened, shit got bad, then I eventually got scouted by the Office n’ started to turn shit around. I mostly work for security corps on Ceres, these days. It’s good work for what it is, yeah?”

She sucks in a breath through her teeth to hear Direct Action from him, having heard horrific stories ranging from open, repeated bigotry to full out abuse from uplifts she had known on Europa, and heard enough stories from them at the rehab center for the name to leave a bad taste in her mouth, “I’m so sorry. That must’ve been hard on you, working for DA.”

She smoothes her hands over his head as she takes a steadying breath. Neo-cetaceans kept no secrets among their pod, and although she is sure Rushing Jaws is used to humans being tight-lipped about the things that hurt them most, Eppie is eager to make friends among this new team. To befriend Rushing Jaws, open, frank honestly is a good start. She continues speaking, voice too steady to not intentional, “There was an accident on one of my last missions through the gate. I got really sick, and… it changed me in a way that made it impossible for me to keep doing it. It’s actually the reason I got brought into this at all. I, um…” The thought chills her to say it outloud, freezing her tongue into a block of ice in her mouth, so instead, she says delicately, “I’m like Vidar. I have what they have.”

“I gotcha,” Rushing Jaws says, scooting up a little more so she can wrap her arms around his head in a hug if she likes - careful not to rest too much weight on the floating pier. “I know just enough about it to know that it’s rough stuff; I also know that if you got scouted by the Office that you at least got a shot at turnin’ things around. I know it from workin with folks in your situation, and I know it ‘cause I was in one myself. I was on the fuckin rockeist of beaches before I got scouted, n’ they got me off the rocks and back in the water. I’m still swimmin with a limp, now, but if they could dredge a whale like me up from the depths, then I’d put good cred on a sape like you turnin’ it around.”

Although she can tell he is attempting to not put his weight on the pier, the weight of his head sinks the dock enough that Eppie is sitting in the water. ” She leans down to hug his head, rubbing the beginning of his neck like she would rub somebody’s back, “I appreciate the optimism. They got me off the beach, but the waves have been making it hard to keep my head above water. We just gotta keep working with what we’ve got. It’s really good to know that I’ve got somebody in my corner rooting for me. It means a lot to me.”

“Only way we make it out is by lookin’ out for each other,” Rushing Jaws says, invoking the wisdom of a lost comrade. He knows he should be more careful when meeting new recruits, but Eppie seems lost in a way he can’t bring himself not to help her. Rushing Jaws knows just enough about Watts-McLeod to know how hard it is on anyone, let alone someone as soft as this really goddamned pink sape hugging him now. He also knows enough to know how dangerous it can be to tell someone - and starts to grasp the leap of faith Eppie took.

“By the way, you can call me RJ.”

“Call me Eppie. Or, I don’t know, whatever. I’m sure the Office would appreciate people using nicknames instead, since we won’t be throwing my name around as much,” She pauses, then adds with a laugh, “I don’t think I even introduced myself in the first place. My bad.”

She smooshes her cheek on the top of RJ’s head, sighing contently, “Your head is cozy.”

“Thanks,” he says in a tone that is mostly soft and only slightly teasing. “I’ll be sure to keep your name to myself when there’s risk of the wrong people hearin’ it. Also - your kulning back there made for one helluv’ an introduction.”

She grins, “Thanks! I worked with a bunch of neo-cetaceans while I worked at an uplift rehab center, back when I lived out on Europa. I tried my best to sing as much as I could with them, so, y’know, I could bond with them in the same way they bonded with each other. It helped me a lot to become friends with people who were really nervous or wary about humans.”

“I’ll bet,” Rushing Jaws says, impressed by her efforts. “Funny thing: some metapods on Ceres have taken to singin’ kulnings to talk over long distances of ocean. You tend to hear it more with parents on pup-wranglin’ detail, but the big notes tend to carry across long distances well, so we’ve taken to using ‘em more generally too. I gotta say - you got a real pretty singin’ voice.”

She pats his head, “You’re so sweet, thank you!” She shifts a little bit to be more comfortable, carefully to keep away from his blowhole to not suffocate him, “We actually got the idea from Ceres! It’s difficult, if not impossible, for us to replicate your songs, so we did some research with kulnings to adopt that for work with neo-cets. Worked like a charm.”

“I’ll bet you still gotta pipe ‘em through sound systems to get the pups to come swimmin’ along, huh?” Rushing Jaws asks, gently teasing. “That’s good stuff though. Y’know I… considered casting out to Europa at the end of my contract with D-A. Ceres has its problems, but after years of D-A I wasn’t about to sign more years off for a term of service with the defense forces - especially not with Europa in the shadow of the Jovian Junta. ‘Still, it’s good to know the uplifts over there got sapes lookin’ out for ‘em.”

“The Jovians talk a much bigger game than they can actually follow-up on, in my experience. Just a bunch of racist cowards. All talk and no walk. Just fear tactics and campaigns to spread animosity among anyone that isn’t wealthy or powerful or both,” She shrugs, “I think you could take them in a fight.”

“Appreciate the vote of confidence; if they ever swing by Ceres, I’ll let you know how it goes. We may have our own brand of evil fuckers running the place, but there’s lotsa good folks there too. Ya won’t find many centers of uplift culture like what you can find on Ceres, that’s for sure. I reckon if Europa n’ Ceres got a lot in common in that respect: rough places to live, for different reasons, but lots of good people too. Either one woulda been a good choice, I guess.”

“I would agree… but I’m biased. Europa rules. Ten out of ten would recommend.”

Rushing Jaws gets a good laugh out of that: “Tell ya what, doe - I’m ready to start swimmin’ again. How ‘bout you spawn in some kind of watercraft and you can tell me all about the pros and pros of Europa while we’re underway?”

Eppie laughs, “You ready to hear the sales pitch of your life?” She spawns a kayak beside her, and gives RJ’s head a parting squeeze before she wiggles out from underneath him to slip into the kayak. She spawns the oar into her hands, following the sight of his dorsal fin as he slowly submerges himself into the water, and paddles after him into the horizon of the simulspace.
 
Well after Eppie and he have spoken at length about the merits of their respective aquatic homeworlds, well after Eppie has departed to check on other members of the team and prepare for the next leg of the mission, Rushing Jaws swims at an easy pace in the simulated Puget Sound, still singing her kulning to himself as he browses the local mesh-

-when an idea occurs to him.

Hey Māzǔ.
[What’s up?]
Augs for Mars are probably a good idea, huh?
[I figured you wanted to leave that to whatever suit of armor you could score planetside.]
That’s part of the plan, def. I want this morph prepped for local conditions anyways, just in case
[Certainly not gonna roast you for taking precautions - want me to search around?]
If you would, yeah. Figure we just need the genedata for this tank. I’ll pay in cred if they’re takin’ it, I’m gonna use what favors I can spare for a fabber blueprint.
[Roger that!]

Māzǔpó leaves a window in RJ’s entoptics open to show her progress as she searches the local mesh for scum genehackers willing to take credits for biomods, as he embarks on searching the Circle-A for anyone with armor clothing blueprints. He posts a status on the Silence’s mesh feeds, and it doesn’t take long for a response to land.

OlPeteyTenDicks: [yooooo, rushing jaws???]
MurderSurfer: [the one and only! :xFgrin:]
OlPeteyTenDicks: [dude, your xps are fucking killer!! My buddy in the belt jailbreaks em and sends them here all the fucking time and they’re amazing!!!]
OlPeteyTenDicks: [what’re you lookin for armor clothing blueprints for???]
MurderSurfer: [oh y’know, better to have it and not need it.]
OlPeteyTenDicks: [what’s up? Someone givin you trouble?]
MurderSurfer: [nothin like that - my crew n’ I are gonna be heading into unfriendly territory soon so i wanna be able to fab some discreet protection, y’know?]
OlPeteyTenDicks: [worm, ping me in a half hour n i should have those for ya]
MurderSurfer: [hell yeah! Thanks dude!]

[Armor clothing? Figured you were going for heavy body armor.]
That stuff takes forever to fab, and you stick out like a screamin’ seal. I’ll call out on the surface if I end up needin’ it.
[Understood! I got more good news.]
Yuh?
[I got a line on a genehacking group on the swarm who’ll take credits to send you aug data; I told them you were from the Ceres pods and all they ask is for a chat.]
Well shit, I got nothin but time in here. Put ‘em through!
[Roger, stand by!]

Sisuaq_aularuq [hello there!]
MurderSurfer: [<Hello!>]
Sisuaq_aularuq: [<ah! You know> neo-cetacean!]
MurderSurfer: [<yes! I have spent a long time with other singers>]
Sisuaq_aularuq: [<wonderful!! You are from> Ceres?]
MurderSurfer: [<yes! For five years now. I learned the language from the people there.>]
Sisuaq_aularuq: [<delightful! Would you sing with me for a time?>]
MurderSurfer: [<absolutely! I need your help with my body.>]
Sisuaq_aularuq: [<yes, your muse spoke to us. Why are you in a human body?>]
MurderSurfer: [<it is my choice, whenever visiting new places. We live in a human world, and it is easier to be as a human.>]
Sisuaq_aularuq: [<i understand. It is prudent, if unfortunate.>]
MurderSurfer: [<I am going to> Mars <in this body, and need changes to make sure it can be on the surface. Will you take> credits?]
Sisuaq_aularuql: [<for you, yes!> Credits <help us when swimming among the bastard> hypercorps.]
MurderSurfer: [<good. What do you need from me?>]
Sisuaq_aularuq: [<aside from the payment - your body’s> genetic <information. We shall use it to write the code needed to change it.>]
MurderSurfer: [<i will give it to you now.>]
Sisuaq_aularuq: [<good! And you will tell us of> Ceres <and its people?>]
MurderSurfer: [<gladly!>]

Rushing Jaws speaks with the neo-beluga representative of the mercurial pod aboard the Silence for a time, telling them about the pods of Ceres that he swims with. They share this information with their pod, and the questions come almost faster than Rushing Jaws can keep up with. He describes the pods in warm terms - not least because they helped him up from the depths he’d sunken to - and answers every question to the best of his knowledge.
An hour goes by without him noticing, happy to hear speakers of the neo-cetacean language this far sunward from Ceres. His sister comes up in the course of the conversation, and he starts to feel her absence as he swims alone in the simulated sea, even after they have signed off and encoded the information his meditank needs to incorporate the augmentations.

[Send her a folder when you get a minute?]
Might do. Dunno if I got enough not-classified shit to make it worth it.
[True. Better to wait and not blaze a trail that leads back to either of you.]
yeah.
[It’s hard, I know. You miss her.]
She’s all I got left, Māzǔpó.
[Hey now, you’ve also got the pods of Ceres.]
I guess.
[You just spent hours talking to the Silence metapod about them.]
It ain’t the same, Māzǔpó, we been over this.

Māzǔpó doesn’t respond right away. Rushing Jaws swims on, singing the calls of the Maelstrom pod into a simulated inlet.

[You’re right; we have. I’m sorry, RJ, I didn’t mean to breeze past that. It isn’t the same, I know.]
I miss them, Māzǔpó. I miss them so goddamn much.
[I do too, RJ. No pod will ever be like them - but that doesn’t mean no pod is worth the effort to join.]
How d’you figure?
[You belong with people who you can be deeply intimate with, RJ. Even with the Ceres pods, you’re reserved, and they’re picking up on that. I mean, consider how you were with Eppie just now!! She approaches you in your own terms and you two hit it off!! You could be so happy if you laid their memory to rest. It’s not fair to yourself to just cut yourself off, RJ - you’ve got a good heart and you want everyone to make it through. You don’t have to carry the weight of what happened on Earth by yourself.]
I don’t even remember what happened on Earth, Māz.
[That doesn’t make it any less painful. Your loss cut deep, RJ, and you need people in your life who you don’t have to keep secrets around. You need a place where you’re free to hurt, and free to heal. You need people in your life who’ve been where you’ve been, who you can be yourself around, and who you can use your talents to help. You can honor the memory of the Maelstrom pod by making it through this and finding a new pod to call home.]

Rushing Jaws has nothing to say in response, feeling something in his mind - and his heart - shift as his muse’s counseling sinks in. He swims on, singing the calls of his pod, expecting no response but taking solace in the sounds as they return to him from bouncing off of rocks and fish - the sounds just different enough on the way back to remind him of his fallen brethren, their ghosts showing him the way on.

---

[Hey, RJ.]
Yeah?
Rushing Jaws has spent the past hour swimming along, barely marking the time that passes as he leafs through the mesh or watches livestreams of scum parties that he would really like to be part of - Māzǔ’s words calling him back to the moment.

[I’ve been going over the stuff Vidar uploaded to the TacNet.]
No kidding? Find anything?
[He gave it a heroic effort, but these guys? Real good. I’ve been following the routes he took in tracing their paths, and it’s taken digging up logs from whatever ships and shuttles docked with the barge to offload folks that I can sketch out any kind of picture.]
What d’you got for us?
[These bastards are real good at evading detection. They use crowds and their environments extremely well, and they have to have some kind of counter-surveillance training and gear in order to ghost cams and spimes. They vanish from the mesh dozens of times, and they’re real diligent about swapping out mesh IDs - not hard to do, but it made backtracing even harder. The only way I was able to pick up their trail was by following Vidar’s work and figuring out how they broke up their patterns.]
Any idea on where they came from?
[Best answer I’ve got is ‘all over the swarm.’ They’re damn hard to track on the barge and the trail goes cold completely past whatever shuttles they took. Get this: they all converged on the Annora Arabella almost right after we went in to speak with Gray Xu. I don’t know how, but they must’ve gotten wind of the meeting somehow and arranged for everyone to converge on the barge’s location to mob the guards and try overwhelming us. Over half of them weren’t even on the barge around when Devin arranged the meet with Gray Xu - this took orchestration.]
So… too coordinated and careful to be some gang attack.
[Right.]

Rushing Jaws hums in thought for a moment, thinking back on the fight.

They didn’t fight like your average professional mercs, either - sure they went for cover, but all they had were pistols n’ shit, except for what they could take off the bodies of the guards.
[Maybe they counted on Gray Xu and her mooks fighting you rather than putting up a united front?]
Helluva chance to take for a group that has the operational know-how to give the best investigator I know a headache.
[One that seems not to have paid off, either.]
Unless…
[What?]
Unless seizing the cargo wasn’t the point of the attack?
[Elaborate.]
Fuckin - those guys’ stacks exploded in the fight; stacks don't do that unless they’ve specifically been equipped with either dead switches or emergency farcasters. At least one of those explosions was big enough to have been a farcaster - and there were a bunch of the fuckers we left for the nanoswarm. You don’t put your own stack at risk like that unless you’re more worried about being taken alive than your own survival.
[Or unless you have the contingency of an emergency farcaster built in to your stack.]
Which raises another point: those are fuckin expensive. Why buy a farcaster when you can get some serious firepower for the same cred? Gangers lookin to score aren’t gonna buy tech like that, and they sure as fuck don’t go to the trouble of making sure they can’t be backtraced. If you prioritize somethin’ like an emergency farcaster in your reqs, it’s because your plan either involves or accounts for somethin goin real bad and having to blast out of there. This is special ops-level shit, and these guys have to be playing a longer game than what we can see.
[Wanna take this to the crew?]
Should do, yeah. Make sure Starglass is read in, too.
[Done and done.]

Azathothwakes {The Eye}: [Hey squad, I think we got something on those party crashers from earlier (attachment: Analysis of Surveillance Data provided by agent: Heliotrope)]
Azathothwakes {The Eye}: [Basically, my muse took a couple hours to look over the data Heliotrope was able to gather on the fuckers and piece together their routes converging on the Annora Arabella. What she found was that they pulled off a fuckin ballet of a rendezvous, with over half of 'em not even aboard the ship when hara arranged the meet with Gray Xu. Our guess is that somethin must have tipped them off to our comin' aboard, and they thought they could exploit Gray Xu's paranoia in a bid to catch us all out and take over the ship. Whoever they are, they went to exceptional lengths to make sure they couldn't be back-traced, and they're operating on another level from gangers.]
Azathothwakes {The Eye}: [There's somethin' else: remember how their stacks blew up in the middle of the fight? We're pretty sure they had either dead switches or emergency farcasters rigged up, which means they prioritized not falling into our hands over getting out of there alive. Farcasters and dead switches are covert ops-level tech: if they'd rather die and give up a score like the Annora Arabella than get caught, I'm willin' to bet that these are some major-league operators playing a longer game than we think.]
 
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The next two hours are a blur, quite literally. Abby is tripping hard and experiences the world mostly in a blur of colors and sounds. After three hours of tripping, however, the novelty has mostly worn off. This isn't Abby's first rodeo, so to speak, and her brain definitely has formed certain patterns it recognizes in the experience. After hour four, she is well and truly bored.
Proxy, find me a clinic? I need to get scrubbed.
[Absolutely, Abigail. I am mildly surprised you didn't ask sooner. I have located a nearby “Body Shop” which advertises the service you require.]
Rad. Navigate please?
It takes some doing, due to the disorientation, but Abby is able to make her way to the Body Shop with Proxy's directions. The scum running the shop are more than happy to help her clean out her system, with a little good-natured teasing of course. As the Buzz was flushed from her system, certain memories got hazy, but she was used to that to an extent. Once the procedure was over, she sat in the recovery area snacking on some cracker-like substance and messaged Yasmin.
[Hey, I just got cleaned up. Don't remember the last four hours too great, but like. I totally remember you promising to get me up to speed on what the fuck, so uh. What the fuck?]


Yasmin’s response is swift in coming, along with a set of coordinates for outside the Silence’s spin drum. [Ah good! Yes, I will tell you what, ah, the fuck, is going on - we should speak in a secluded area of the ship. I have already scouted a location for us, and can meet you there at any time - let me know when you are ready to meet.]

Abby does a quick estimate of how long it would take her to get there from where she currently is, and fires off a quick response. [Gotcha. Omw, be there in a bit. Looking forward to an explanation for the weird nightmare shit we dealt with earlier.]
She tactfully leaves out her plans to stop for caffination on the way, but that is probably fine.

[I shall see you soon; you have more than earned some answers.]
Sure enough, down a corridor and holding two ectos connected by a cable, Yasmin waits. Spotting Abby rouses her from her inserts and brings a small smile to her face: “Salaam, saddiq - I am glad to see you back safely from your trip. I will give you the answers you seek, but I must first ask you take this ecto and slave it to your inserts - it shall ensure a measure of privacy.”

“Alright, excellent. I was honestly afraid I was just gonna get cryptic bullshit,” Abby replies, following Yasmin's instructions.

[You have done too much and risked too much for us to not have earned some answers,] Yasmin replies over the ecto, once the connection is stable and secure. [I am sorry to have employed secrecy, and i suspect it will come as cold comfort to tell you it was for the good of us all. I enlisted your aid with this because your skills as a hacker are without peer, and were needed in order to guarantee our success in this endeavour. Simply put, myself and the others who you have been working with are part of a movement to combat extinction itself; we narrowly survived the Fall, and our movement is committed to ensuring that it does not happen again. We prevent or contain existential risks such as the nanoswarm you helped destroy before they can escalate to threaten our survival. It is a lot to take in at once, so perhaps it is best to let you inquire, and I shall answer as I can. What would you like to know first?]

[Hm. Actually I have a question not related to the job. I have apparently had someone spying on me lately. Do you know anything about that?]

Yasmin’s face has a brief oh dear expression on it as she begins her response: [I do not, unfortunately, but I can assure you they are not with us. What can you tell me about them?]

[It's a private eye, I thought at first they were working for my parents, but I am not certain,] Abby says, then proceeds to share the details of the investigation she found out.

[Thank you for letting me know - I can make no promises with regard to finding out who they are, but I will be sure to pass it along to those who can help keep them off of you, whoever they are. This information and data will certainly be helpful to that end. Now - what else can I help you with?]

[I mean, I guess the obvious one is what is your movement called? Is is something I might have heard of, or are you guys that good at keeping secrets?]

[You might have come across conspiracy theories relating to a group called Firewall in some deep mesh dives? We are a sprawling movement, but we hold one idea above all others: that there must not be another Fall. The interests of many powers in transhumanity disagree with our assessments, however, and so we must operate in secrecy. We are very good at keeping secrets, as the nature of our work and our methods depends on our being invisible: you will have a hard time finding anything about us that we do not want you to know about.]

[That’s fair, and very impressive. I would love to learn how you manage a digital footprint for an entire organization, but I suspect that is something I would have to join up to learn if at all possible. So I guess the follow would be: I get contracting out a hacker, but if you are opening up to me then clearly you are scouting me. In which case, why? Wouldn't it be easier to use an in-house hacker, or keep me on retainer or something?]

At this, Yasmin smiles.
[We have some of the best hackers transhumanity has yet produced, and so do our opponents: it is an arms race seemingly without end. As for you, however: you would effectively be on call. You and the comrades you worked with will live your lives when not on a mission for us. Part of our trade relies on our operatives vanishing at the end of a mission, once the threat is dealt with, so as to not give our enemies targets. You will go about your life during your downtime, pursuing your own projects, and then we will arrange for you to arrive at the mission site when we need you.]
[We are scouting you, Abigail, because to put it simply your talents could make the difference between survival and extinction. I have spoken and will continue to speak highly of your talents as a hacker because you have made your name as a hacker without peer: you demonstrated your talents in the tournament a month ago, you proved you could do what it takes aboard the Annora Arabella, and cracked Marcus’s cyberbrain like no one I know could. You have also shown that you can handle yourself in the field - further distinguishing you from many in your field.]
[Finally, there is the matter of this being something of a volunteer position. To be clear: if you choose to join us, we will provide as much support as we can on missions, which will frequently come down to making sure you can get where you need to go and keeping the authorities off you, but this doesn’t pay like a hypercorp job would - not that the hypercorps would fund us, given that their interests frequently conflict with ours. We have many hackers in our movement that understand the importance of our work, and have been rejected by just as many who didn’t see the profit to be made.]
[i apologize for speaking at length, but it is critical you understand what we ask of you. So, to answer your question: we believe you have the right combination of skills and will to make a difference out there. Not to put too fine a point on it, but ten years on and we face many dangers to our survival: people like you can and have made a difference out there. It is dangerous, difficult, and often thankless work - the Annora Arabella is but a taste of what you may have to deal with - but if we are to see another ten years, it is work that must be done.]

Abby looks shocked at the intensity of Yasmin's reply.
[Fuck. Okay. Uh. Fuck, goddamn. That is some seriously heavy shit, like a lot more than I thought. Last question I can think of, then. What would happen if I say no?]

[We will return you to Venus, and from there you would be free to go about your life. Any attempts to independently investigate us will be noted and responded to, but otherwise we will leave you be.]

[That is a lot nicer than I expected, to be honest. That said, I think I am in. We each have a lot to offer each other it seems, and I do genuinely enjoy working with the guys you grouped me up with. I would definitely love to hear more about your benefits package, but I can't imagine anything that would override my curiosity.]

Yasmin seems to visibly relax to see that Abby is willing to join the cause.
[Excellent. I apologize again for having to deceive you regarding the true nature of our movement, but as you will soon come to appreciate, the stakes are high. You will soon be given access to our private network and asked to establish your credentials, and our router will be getting in touch with you to properly orient you.]
[Welcome to Firewall, Abigail - and thank you.]
 
The Peculiar Taste of Silence
Two Days Later​

Two days pass following the destruction of the Annora Arabella, and that time is used well to recover from the encounter, to acquire gear, to partake in the delights to be found aboard The Peculiar Taste of Silence, and to get acquainted with comrades; close to the end of that second day, a message arrives from Starglass.

Starglass {The Eye}: [Sentinels, we’ve caught a break: it turns out that a handful of scum and other autonomists are arranging for transport to Pontes station by way of a transport ship, Upload the Nematode. The ship is set to depart soon, but we’ve been able to pull a few favors and get some space aboard set aside for the six of you. We’ve already arranged for Sleipnir’s meditank to be delivered to the section of the transport you’ll be staying in, and we’ve set up the storage crate that you will be able to stash your weapons and gear upon arrival to Pontes. You should be getting contacted by the ship’s crew soon, letting you know where to report and how long you have before you ship out; wrap up whatever business you’ve got left to take care of and report to Upload the Nematode with enough time to get situated and strapped in before it blasts off for Mars.]

As if on cue, a message from the crew is swift in coming.

LoveTheWorm {Circle-A}: [Yo! Heard y’all needed a last-minute ride out to Mars? We’re toward the back of the swarm from your co’ords, we got a shuttle we can send your way when you’re ready – just call it soon, we’ve started our checks and we’re lookin to get underway in the next three to six hours. We’ll get you set up once you’re here, do what you gotta do but try not to take too long, yeah?]

Along with the message are enclosed specifications for the Upload the Nematode, a standard transport ship that has been serving this role in the swarm since the Fall.

571130
This vessel is one of the most common freighter and passenger vessel in the solar system. While egocasting is by far the most common form of inter-habitat transport, some people prefer to travel by ship and others do not wish to leave their current morph behind. In addition, some goods are easier or cheaper to physically transport rather than duplicating their templates. As a result, standard transports regularly travel to and from every large habitat and inhabited planet and moon in the solar system. These are modern fusion-drive ships that offer fast and comfortable travel for passengers as well as relatively swift transport for small cargoes.

One of the additional benefits of the standard transport is the fact that it contains four separate passenger compartments, each of which is mounted on a 90 meter-long booms that can extend and rotate to simulate gravity. When rotating at a comfortable 2 rpm, passengers experience Mars level gravity. Typically, the gravity maintained in these pods starts at the local gravity (or Mars gravity, if the local gravity is higher) and over the course of the journey gradually increases or decreases to the gravity of the destination. However, these pods cannot rotate to produce gravity higher than that found on Mars.

Shortly after that, a message comes in from Yasmin al-Rundi.

Atreides Apogee {The Eye}: [Ah! I see your ship has come in! Very well, I shall assist with directing the Doc-Bot carrying Mach over to the ship. Unfortunately comrades, I will not be coming along on this journey, as other matters require my attention. After what I have seen though, I have confidence you will be able to handle whatever Mars has to throw at you as a team. If I do not see any of you after today: it has been an unexpected pleasure working with you all, and may Allah watch over you in the days to come.]
 
Euphemia ‘Eppie’ Cross
The Peculiar Taste Of Silence​

Eppie wakes to a chiming in her mind, her entopics activating as she rouses from sleep to show a message from Starglass. She sits up as she reads through the message, only getting halfway through before a second message comes through from the crew that is set-up to shuttle them out. A bundle of nerves ties itself in her stomach, part anxiety and part excitement. Most of her exploration experience comes from planets deep into the galaxies on the other side of the Pandora Gate, but she has sorely missed out on many chances to explore the inner rims, and it has been years since she stepped foot on the red planet.

However, she knows for a fact it will not be anything close to a pleasure cruise - beyond knowing that Firewall is sending them into what is sure to be a disaster of a situation, Eppie also knows through Elias that parts of Mars, underneath the glitz and glamour of the hyperelite, have seedy underbellies full of people pushed to desperate places.

Movement beside her makes her focus turn away from Yasmin’s message, and she smiles as a scaled hand runs across her bare stomach, “Morning, sunshine,” She teases, closing out of her entopics as she looks down at a groggy Zhou.

“‘Morn,” He rumbles, nuzzling his face into her side as his arm moves to wrap around her waist. Her hand comes up to rest on top of his head, gently scratching his scalp, and he hums a sound akin to the purr of a lazy cat, “Sleep well?”

She huffs a laugh, “Hard not to, after all that.”

“Aw, you’re gonna make me blush, pink,” He murmurs, looking up at her. He reaches up his hand to cradle her jaw, thumb tracing around the brand new face tattoos Eppie had asked Zhou to ink onto her morph, “It looks like they’re healing good. And the mods we hooked you up with - well, if they can survive me, there’s nothing Mars can throw at them that they won’t be able to handle.”

Eppie flushes a bit as she chuckles, rubbing the back of her neck, where she can feel raised bite scabs and soreness from light bruising under her fingers, “No kidding. Gonna be hard hiding some of this shit under clothes. You’re giving me a bad rep on my first day, Z.”

“I’ll apologize if you tell me convincingly that you weren’t into it.”

“Touché.”

He squeezes her a bit tighter around her waist, “You gotta ship out soon, huh?”

“No sooner than three hours, no later than six hours.”

“Damn. Would’ve really liked you to stick around.”

She beams at him, ducking down to kiss the top of his head, “I stir up enough trouble that we’re bound to meet again sooner rather than later.”

He laughs, “Can’t deny that. Just keep in contact, yeah? I wanna know that you’re not getting into too much trouble, biting off more than you can chew.”

“I’ll be okay, I’ve got some tough people watching my back. But if it’ll help you sleep better, I’ll make sure to send a packet or two as proof of life.”

“Thanks,” He looks over across the room, “We should probably get dressed. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t at least get you breakfast before we see you off.”

“You’re too sweet,” She croons, pinching his cheeks, “Just a widdle softie~”

He holds a hand to his chest, as if scandalized, “My greatest secret, out just like that. Exposed to the world.”

Eppie laughs, but there is something in his eyes that brings her pause, “What’s up?”

“Just… be careful out there. It’s a mean universe out there, and not everyone is gonna look out for your best interests. You’re better than most, but I’d hate someone to use that against you.”

“I’m tougher than I look, I promise. You don’t gotta worry about me out there. I’ll be okay.”

He shrugs, “Can’t argue with that. Watching you crack open a synth with a wrench was pretty impressive.”

“See? Give me a wrench and I can take on a TITAN. Now, help me try and find out where the fuck my pants went.”
 
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Some people swapped morphs as easily as they changed clothes, but Devin was beginning to accept the fact that he wasn't one of them. If he was feeling philosophical about it, he would have thought it was because he'd spent so long making his birth morph perfect, tailored just so, that any other morph felt like pulling on someone else's oversized clothes, but he was too busy trying to center himself in the Theseus morph instead of from where he seemed to be hovering just to the left of it to consider anything but his discomfort and annoyance.

Marina was definitely saying words at him, but they weren't registering properly.

He looked down at the new morph's hands and curled and uncurled the fingers. Your fingers, he thought, but that was wrong. His fingers were smaller, thinner, with knuckles that were a little knobby and uneven fingernails because he picked at them, and a dusting of freckles in freefall from the back of his hands. His hands had constellations drawn on them in green ink, because Armand had had a pen and a star map last night. These hands were wider, squatter, darker, calloused, and they were good hands, but they were not his.

"Devin, are you listening to me?"

His tongue was the wrong size. "No. I'm disassociating," he said, he slurred, and looked up. The Thesus was taller than he was, and Marina was at the wrong angle, and that was the worst part of a new morph. It made everyone else unfamiliar too.

Marina sighed. "Just be careful, alright? I don't want to hear you died on Mars."

"I have a farcaster," Devin said, and knew that was the wrong response even as he said it. What was the right one? He knew it...

"At least you'll have a week to get settled," Marina said. She smoothed his hair back, and that was familiar and right, at least. "Call me, alright?"

"Alright. Okay." Devin took a deep breath. "Fuck Mars," he said, and she laughed.
 
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Rushing Jaws
The Mother Fuck​

Having been submerged in a meditank for two days objective time, the sensation of dry air is almost uncanny; it is also a relief to feel it on this morph’s skin, along with being able to get out and move around the chamber again with this morph back at one hundred percent.
Rushing Jaws has been casting himself around the Mother Fuck’s bodyshop for a good twenty minutes now, checking to make sure that everything is in order. He corkscrews, bounces, and freefalls around as though swimming, humming when not outright singing the songs of his old pod. His Fury moves with spare grace, good as new and with ego and morph in perfect synchronous. A window in his entoptics runs the interface for his medichines, which returns a clean bill of health and his new biomods installed without a glitch.

If only he felt as good as his entoptics told him he should.

Hey Māz, you reckon we got time to fit a fight in?
[We actually got a message from Starglass: it’s time to load up, we’re going to Mars]
Rushing Jaws grabs onto a handhold, frowning as he reads through the messages that he didn’t initially read as they came in. Sure enough, Starglass got them a ship, and sure enough they’re shipping out within hours. He runs some numbers, trying to figure out if he could fit a match in and make it to the ship.
[Rushing Jaws.]
His attention called to the AR avatar of his own muse, Rushing Jaws grimaces to see the disapproving look on her face.
What??
[You just got done healing up, do you really want to put yourself right back into a meditank?]
I ain’t lookin to pick a firefight Māz, fuck!!!
[You’re on mission, RJ - you’ve got to lock it up. This shuttle trip is the perfect time to take a break from that shit, you won’t have anyone to murder aboard Upload the Nematode.]
You reckon vidar wouldn’t be up for a fight?
[Rushing Jaws, no.]
Rushing Jaws’ humming is cut short by the command, his own mind reeling in protest but any further wisecracks dying in his throat.

[You don’t have to be strong right now, or even for the next week, RJ. You do need to keep your cool if you don’t want to snap and do something you’ll regret. Knowing how this line of work goes, there will be plenty of violence on Mars.]
I hate how I feel right now, Māz.
[You’ll feel better if you give yourself time to remember what life was like off of MRDR.]
I’ll also feel better if i use.
[And what good will that do? You’ll be fine for a day, or maybe even six hours, and then just go back to feeling like this. You won’t get better without managing this.]
What’s the point of that, huh?
[You don’t deserve to suffer, RJ.]
Rushing Jaws only now notices the look of deep concern and even a little sorrow on Māzǔpó’s face, like this is painful for her to see. The softness in her words touches something raw, something that brings a mist to his eyes and stirs the roiling cauldron of caustic emotions already frothing within him.
He misses the clarity of combat.
He misses his pod.
He misses the days he can’t remember.
He wishes this would all just go away.

[I’ve got a skiff that we can use to link up with Yasmin - she says she’ll need help with the doc bot. Want me to call it in?]
Time and tide, right?
As his muse arranges for a pickup, Rushing Jaws kicks off for the storage crate containing his things. He removes his vacsuit, donning it easily before it syncs with his inserts and conforms to his Fury’s frame. He removes the machine gun - hard won firepower that will almost certainly come in handy - and the medium pistol, holstering them on his back. He finds the small capsule, containing-
-his MRDR.
It would be so easy.
One tab, and twenty minutes, is all it would take to settle his stomach, to still his mind, to keep this all at bay for another day.
Rushing Jaws opens the capsule.
He stares into it: six tabs, all present and accounted for.
He takes a breath.
He closes the capsule and puts it in his utility belt.
Let's get the fuck out of here.

—-

The Peculiar Taste of Silence​

“RJ!!!”
Muting his song as he hears his nickname get called, Rushing Jaws picks out Yasmin’s bouncer out from the other side of the doc-bot, the both of them suspended in microgravity. Nodding big in response, he kicks off from the bulkhead, clearing the hallway and then arresting himself on his side of the doc-bot containing Mach’s security pod. The doc-bot regards him with a single spherical camera, gently scooting itself with microthrusters to avoid a collision; it reminds him of an small GEV, the glass of the healing vat on its back fogged over.
“This our boy, huh? He really got it that bad?”
“Worse than you did, if you can believe it,” Yasmin answers. “He’s been in there for two days, and he’ll need five more.”
“Should be conscious soon though, yeah?”
“Hard to say, but his vitals are holding steady.”
“That’s a start.”
“This doc bot is for the ship, part of the deal we brokered. The vat, however, can be kept in your crew quarters.”
“Roger that.”
“Saddiq?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you well?”
Rushing Jaws is thrown by the question, having hoped he wasn’t so obvious.
“I’ll be fine - fresh out of the tank, y’know?”
Yasmin gives him a concerned look, apparently not entirely convinced.
“Very well. I must go, the others should be here soon.”
“Rog, i’ll keep watch.”
“Saddiq? Good luck out there.”
“Same to you, comrade.”

—
Transport Ship Upload the Nematode​

After all preparations are completed, all sentinels gathered up, and a ride from The Peculiar Taste of Silence, the shuttle arrives at one of two docking ports built onto the transport ship Upload the Nematode; there is the jolt that attends docking clamps securing the shuttle to the ship, and then a moment that passes as the airlock equalizes, before the door opens out to the ship. Seconds after the door opens, an AR avatar of a colorful bouncer appears from the other side as if freefalling into view from around the corner – arresting their momentum on the far-side doorhold with a welcoming smile on.

[Hi there!] The bouncer calls, their voice transmitted over AR following muse-to-muse handshakes. [I’m Ribi! My operator wanted me to handle greeting and orienting you all to the ship before we launch!]
A window appears in everyone’s entoptics of a map laying out the chambers and decks of Upload the Nematode, with AR directionals pointing the way to the passenger compartments. The ship’s layout is straightforward: bridge and crew quarters toward the front, a narrow section for the booms attached to the passenger compartments, currently retracted in preparation for a change in thrust, cargo bay taking up the middle, the ship’s primary reactor past that, an engineering section doubling as the airlock for the shuttles and an EVA craft, and the ship’s fusion drive at the far end.

[You should be able to set your things up in your compartment, though you’ll want to strap everything in while we’re still on the float – gotta keep the pods in so that the burn doesn’t tear them right off the hull! We should be getting underway soon now that you’re all there, but you should have time to set your stuff down and grab a bulb of coffee from the maker before the warnings to strap in go out!]

A set of handholds serve as an effective trail to follow as Ribi winks out of existence, AR directionals helping to guide everyone to the passenger compartments – as well as the Doc-Bot, which tugs itself along with soft puffs of pressurized air as well as the handholds, Mach’s morph safely suspended within the biogel of the meditank and looking considerably better than he had when he first went in. As this ship is considerably smaller than The Peculiar Taste of Silence, it does not take long to reach the passenger compartments, claim sleeping pods, install Mach’s meditank, strap things into place, and place an order for a tray of coffee bulbs.
 
Mach was dimly aware of his surroundings... Goop. Medical goop? Yeah, he'd been here. He hated it.
Oh shit whose medical goop is it?
He thought, and immediately assumed the worst. So, he started punching the glass. Being a Security Pod, he might be able to-
[HOLDITBOSS]
Eh? Nanti, you got something?
[Caught up on chats, we're with our new team. You can chill. Too bad we can't smoke our Hash in here.]
Oh. Shit, that woulda been nice. Lemme catch up to ya.
[Yeah dude, see that bit about the mystery guys they fought?]
... Shit. Unless these guys can read Titan drives, they HAD to be after that Gate Key.
[Tell 'em, man!]

Sleipnir: I dunno if you had anyone look at those artifacts, but the 'mystery item'? I'm about 90% sure it's for interfacing with Pandora gates. And if I'm right, it could've let people change their destinations. A fucking Gate Key... Really wish it coulda been recovered, but Gray's a BITCH and it's too fucking late.
Sleipnir: Still, that sure as hell seems like a good reason to get a death squad with Farcasters. Think about it, the most dangerous thing to their employer is if someone else realizes that the 'mystery item' is in fact possibly the MOST VALUABLE TITAN ARTIFACT EVER RECOVERED.
Sleipnir: If the secret got out, it wouldn't just be criminals and firewall after it, it'd be every damn government around Sol. No idea who's knowledgeable enough to recognize it, and rich/powerful enough to hire people like that, but if they're after Gate tech, they're probably already involved with it, right? Anyway... I just got up, I'm stuck in a meditank, and I'm going to play video games until we arrive. Maybe see if my G-bois can get me a good car and some 'harmless chemicals' too.

[Sounds solid, bossman.]
Yeah... They can research from there. Boot up Redline 4.
[Gotcha.]

Then, true to his word, Mach went very fast, and had Nanti poke his triad contacts about having a car and some "fireworks" delivered to the shuttleport. It would probably be costly, but Mach knew he could earn big for Laoban another time. Right now, he needed to find his cool and make sure he had tools for fighting... Well, whoever they were really after. Night Cartel? Probably Night Cartel. Yeah, they mentioned it in Tacnet a while ago, Night Cartel.
 
A tap tap tap on the meditank glass alerts Rushing Jaws to activity within, and he casts himself over to check on it: the readout on Mach's lifesigns displaying panic-level alertness but weak activity besides.
Still in bad shape, but at least he's awake now.
"Yo!! Settle down in there, huh?? You'll rip your arm outta place before you crack this glass, way you got fucked up-"

Before he can think to check further, another alert pings him over the Eye - this one from the cargo bay. An overlay on his entoptics appears on the map of the ship, with a specially tagged crate highlighted among many such crates kept in the bay.
That must be our stash.
[Seems so!]
Figure we can stash our stuff while we're waitin' to get underway, yeah?

"Gonna go stash my stuff, anyone comin with?" Rushing Jaws asks, maneuvering to cast himself down the corridors toward the cargo bay; before he can get far, though, Mach's latest intel appears in a group chat on the Eye. The tension in his muscles goes slack as he reads over, and he almost slips free of the handhold as the importance of this new information settles on him.

Azathothwakes {The Eye}: [Fuck.... I don't even think that was the only mystery item, either, was it?]
Azathothwakes {The Eye}: [I mean anything TITAN's gotta be real hot tech - you either reverse-engineer the next blue box or get burned so bad you wouldn't be able to appreciate it. For better or worse, it's gone now - but that'd be a huge fucking score to just load up and ship out like this.]
Azathothwakes {The Eye}: [Like, they ain't exactly passing this shit out like candy, but it was a big fucking risk putting it up to auction like this. Either they genuinely didn't count on trouble, or they struck some cursed fuckin gold out there.]
Azathothwakes {The Eye}: [You rest up Sleipnir, solid job gettin' the intel earlier.]

Rushing Jaws takes in breath as though about to speak - but thinks better of it.

Azathothwakes {The Eye}: [I dunno if there's much we can look up remotely about whatever shit's goin down over on Mars, but we oughta make sure we focus on rumors surrounding wild TITAN tech when we get to Pontes.]
 
Eppie ( CelticSol CelticSol ) and Vidar ( TrashRabbit TrashRabbit ) present:
An Awkward Conversation Featuring a Dinosaur and an Optimist
​
“So-” Vidar says, holding a great orange Maine coon over his shoulder, “To answer your question, this is what I am up to.”

He smiles as Eppie looks around the virtual garden. Neko Atsumi has come a long way in the last hundred years and its become a full on garden simulator with much more than cats that can wander in and out. Vidar’s Garden is very aesthetic, and featuring several design elements from the installation in rook town with the windchimes and shifting perspective tricks.

As she observes the garden full of cats - ranging from a regular, run-of-the-mill housecat to animals so heavily modified that she’s not sure if it’s scientifically accurate to call it a ‘cat’ - Eppie feels the same sort of thrill she experiences when she gets to see an alien. She draws in a long, deep breath of pure exhilaration, especially to see the chonkiest cat crawling over Vidar’s shoulder.

“Baby!” She says, reaching out to scritch behind his big, fluffy ears, “Hehe, fluffy. I wuv you. Sweet, sweet baby,” As she pats the cat, she looks at Vidar, “Oh no. Vidar.Vidar. I love him too much. I would do anything he asked of me. Even crime. Especially crime, for the widdle fuzzy baby~”

Vidar laughs, and foists the cat into her hands. The AR does a fairly good job of conveying his fluff, but despite their 0g situation the cat seems to still awkwardly have weight. “This is how the cat yakuza gets you, Eppie!”

“Consider me part of the criminal empire, babey!!!” She says, burying her face into the cat’s fur and nuzzling into him.

“You’re cat-rep is going to purrfect,” He says with a straight face.

Eppie looks up through the fur, “What an absolutely paw-ful pun.”

He laughs, “I try to keep my jokes from being cat-astrophic, honestly, wouldn’t want anyone to know I’m old.”

“You must be kitten around. You don’t look a day over four million years old.”

“I’m not feline a day over 99, thank you, though,” he says. He begins trying to coach a little tuxedo cat with six purple eyes out of a bush with a digital cat treat.

“No need for the cat-itude, my dude,” she quips, closing one eye to avoid getting cat fur in her eyeball as the cat in her arms nuzzles her face insistently for more pets.

“Oh, excuse me, your mjau-jesty,” He said with a fake 0g bow.

“God, Vidar,” She cackles, “These puns are so claw-ver, I’m so fur-tunate to have such a hiss-terical fur-end.”

“Okay okay,” He says in defeat. “I get it. Your cat-rep is already better than mine.”

She grins, looking at the cat in her arm, “You have brought me victory. I owe you my life.”

The cat replies with a soft meorw? then headbutts Eppie for more pets.

“So,” He says after a moment, “What’s your deal?”

“I… what?”

“What are you into, where you from?” He asks, assuming correctly that he hasn’t translated well.

“Oh - well, I’m a xenoanthropologist. I study alien behaviours, cultures, biology… The jack of all trades of alien study, basically. And I was born on earth, but we left for a station orbiting Jupiter when I was really young. What about you? What are you doing when you’re not making cat puns?”

“Oh,” He says. Like he’s 35 again and he’s just been introduced to yet another over qualified friend of his daughter, whom he should not be intimidated by and yet is. “I’m- a gardener.” He says with the best shit eating grin his morph has in its arsenal.

“Oh, that’s awesome! What sort of plants do you grow?”

“Oh- you know. Orchids and weed.”

“My favourite things! Can you send me pics? I would love to see the beauties!”

“Listen I only talk about three things, so be careful,” He says. He sends her the usual file of his collection of orchids interspersed with chubs.

She opens the file, eyes widening as she takes in the plants, “They’re beautiful! I love them.”

“Thanks~” He says. He can’t believe he was even remotely intimidating three seconds ago.

Eppie smiles, watching Vidar. She’s happy to be able to get along with him, or at least, for him to not hate her from the get go. Clutching the cat to her chest, Eppie takes a breath to steady herself, “Hey, Vidar? Did you… Did you get briefed on why I was assigned to this team?”

“Nobody tells me shit?” He says with sudden concern.

It dawns on her that Firewall is incredibly secretive in all aspects, and she sighs, “I don’t know what I expected,” she scritches the head of the chunky cat, then says, “I’m, uh, like you. With the, um…” She wiggles her fingers at Vidar, hoping he clues in the on the gesture.

“Oh,” He says. His first instinct is to apologize in the most norwegian way possible, but he bites it down. “Shit. Okay. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Eppie echoes, looking at the cat to mask her discomfort, “Yeah.”

“Listen, I’m not very good at-” he pauses, “Talking to people.”

“I mean, I was good with people, but now I just-” She gestures vaguely to her eyes, which glimmer with an unsettling intensity, “I don’t know. It’s nice at the very least to, y’know. Have somebody around that gets it? I got infected a couple of months ago, so everything… Sucks a lot. Like, so much.”

“Jesus,” He said, “I’m sorry.” He had never considered himself lucky for the fact that he had no one who knew him to hold him to any previous standards of selfdom or behavior. “You don’t have anybody at all?”

“I, uh…” Eppie puts her face in the cat’s fur, who meows, just in case she cries, “No. My… My wife… She, ah… Well, I think anyone would find it difficult to cope with something like this, and she just… couldn’t.”

He wasn’t sure what he had ever imagined out of meeting another async, he had honestly expected for Firewall to never let that happen. He wasn’t opposed to his situation with firewall, but he knew he was a kept asset and that came with certain set of pros and cons that suited him. He cared about the work and he wasn’t in the map zone anymore; win/win. But Eppie was very young and very pink and he did worry about her being taken advantage of by a shadow organization, even if it did only want to save transhumanity.

“I don’t have much experience with before and after. I had to start all over with everything and sometimes I think that was for the best for me. I don’t know, if that’s a good thing for you to hear or not. But you can certainly rebuild.”

Eppie nods, sniffing and hoping the hue of her skin hides any hint of the tears that are sneaking past her willpower, “It’s just weird, I guess. Being this way. Going to bed one day being a certain person and then waking up... different. I’m glad the ‘office’ picked up on me when they did - I was going to end up outing myself in one way or another sooner rather than later. I’m hoping that…” Eppie looks at Vidar with a smile, hoping the intensity and uncanniness of her gaze doesn’t unnerve him, “I’m hoping that this will be my chance to rebuild.”

He’s thoughtful for a long moment, mindful of his tendency to put certain kinds of people unfairly in what he has come to think of as the “daughter box.” He comes in close to her and the monster of a main coon she is still codling.

“My opinion on this,” He says carefully, “Is pathological...” And it’s a testament to the fact that he’s having a good day that he’s mindful enough to phrase it diplomatically. “But. We have, to my understanding a hypothetically forever to figure it all out if we can just you know- get through all the paper work from office. I don’t think I was the same person the whole time for the first 90 years anyway?” He says with a laugh. “Start doing a couple things you really like and you’ll find some good people easy-you got more people skills than me by half- And then you just hang on to them. Okay? That’s the Old-Man-Guide for making friends in 2130, so jot that down.”

“Got that all jotted down,” She laughs, the sound a little wet with tears, “Rebuilding is harder than I thought. But I guess taking it a little slower - just trying to find people I like and things I like to do - is a smaller, easier way to try and… figure out this new me, I guess. And it helps that I think I like having you around - you hand me enormous cats to hold. Which means I can trust you with my life, if you’re willing to share the love of an enormous floofy boy with me.”

“You got me. AR Cats is my love language,” He says with a hands up you got me gesture and a laugh. “But for real. You’ve got a big heart, so you’ll do fine.” He smiles but his mind is turning over the often repeated question of if anyone who knew him would even recognize him, and he doesn’t have an answer for it and tries to put it to bed, because he probably never will. “You’ve got all the time in the world to figure it out- long as we don’t drop the ball, you know.”

Eppie makes a face at the reminder of eternal life - so long as someone remembers to load her back into another body in the case of death - in this universe. It might’ve been fine when she had her life together and wasn’t deluded into thinking that an enormous alien being infected her mind, but now, thinking of living with this for the rest of her unending life left a stale taste in her mouth. “Not sure if I want al the time in the world if I’m honest with you, Viddy. Maybe like… three quarters, A half, if the universe is generous enough to fuckin end my suffering.”

She gets a laugh out of vidy at the three quarters bit because he couldn’t have put it better himself, “Half of infinity, for sure, please.”

She sighs with a shake of her head, wiping her eyes of remaining tears, then leaning her head into the cat, “We’ll figure it all out eventually. And, we’ve both got each other, y’know? We can lean on each other during the spooky shit that happens to us. I’m so fucking down to be the two weirdos of the team. Tin foil hats and all.”

His partner had convinced him to get the cortical stack and sometimes he just thought about that and couldn’t stop thinking about how that was probably actually, the literal moment his life stopped making any sense. He remembers them saying; ‘It’s not like I’m asking you to go to the future by yourself.’ and yet, here he was.
Eppie was so quick to attach the two of them and it almost caught him off guard. But why wasn’t he? When was he going to meet another Async, or some one so sweet? He felt old and jaded and untrusting for a moment, like his heart needed grease to start producing empathy right again. He had people- a whole family of nerd of Locus but- they didn’t know. And even sometimes, Rj and Devin knowing didn’t seem to make much of a difference because he tried not to mention it- he hadn’t realized how lonely he was, even if he was surrounded by people liked. He realized about half a second too late he was having an entire emotion and responded a bit late;

“That- would- be. Nice. I’ve got at least...Another hundred in me...and we’d look very good in tin foil hats I think.”

“A hundred years of this bullshit will be bearable… ish. Just knowing I’ve got someone who gets it. And I mean, I don’t know how long you’ve had to deal with this, but you have me now. I’ll be here to be your friend, or to like… stare at a wall for four hours to deal with all this wack shit.”

“Yo-” Vidar said, putting his hand out in the intergalactically known motion for ‘Same’ “I’m so good at staring at a wall. I can out stare at a wall anybody.”

She laughs, “You've got the experience, but I’ve got a certain youthful fire.” She pauses a moment, then grins, “Let’s put it to the test, shall we? We do downtime for a bit, and whoever wakes up most zenned out wins?”

“I am all for that, the last twenty four hours have sucked...minus the pirate stuff. is there a metric for zenned out?” he asks. He spent a lot of time staring at walls, and it was nice to have someone who was the opposite of concerned with his need to turn himself on and off again.

“Let’s discuss this on the way. First rule, no weed beforehand, that’s absolutely cheating…”
 
Transport Ship Upload the Nematode​

[ALL PASSENGERS AND CREW, FIND YOUR CRASH COUCHES AND STRAP IN!! We will be breaking off from the swarm and heading to Mars shortly!! ALL PASSENGERS AND CREW, FIND YOUR CRASH COUCHES AND STRAP IN!!]

AR warnings appear in bright lettering as warning alerts start to sound, everyone finding their way to the nearest available crash couches and strapping in. It is practically automatic to everyone who has spent much time living in space; those who haven’t are easily guided through by instructions provided to them by Ribi, and within minutes everyone is confirmed to be strapped in. Cameras built on the hull exterior offer a view into space, and soon a 3D map of local space is available to stream in lieu of visible cameras pointing back at the ship: Upload the Nematode is at the trailing end of the swarm, having gradually burned off velocity to prepare for the burn and easily dwarfed by ships like Mammoth Apostle and barges like the Silence.

Rushing Jaws is halfway to strapping himself down, having just checked to make sure Mach would be okay in his meditank, when his muse alerts him to the ship’s primary mesh channel.

LoveTheWorm: [Still reading two out of their crash couches, @lilpinkpunk and @2sday. They aren’t responding to pings, anyone know what gives?]

“Oh, fuck-“ Rushing Jaws swears, undoing his straps and casting out for where TacNet tells him they are.

MurderSurfer: [Yo, they’re with me, omw]

LoveTheWorm: [They okay? I got a servi down there with them, plus their muses tell me they’re okay, they are just… not moving, not responding to touch, anything.]

Must be some async shit, is what Rushing Jaws thinks.
What he actually says is: [Yeah, they got ahold of some petals back on the swarm, musta taken ‘em to kill the time. If you got enough robots to start scootin ‘em up, i’ll take ‘em to where we’re bunkin and get ‘em strapped in.]

Navigating to where Eppie and Vidar are is effortless - Rushing Jaws intercepts the two of them being gently tugged along by two servitor robots configured for microgravity. The robots’ faceplates project a ! as they recognize his projected rep handle, Vidar and Eppie inert in their grip.

“Y’all wanna let me take a look at ‘em real quick? Trained paramedic here.”

The robots project a thumbs up and rotate in space to present the two asyncs to him: sure enough, they are both in a deep fugue-like state, their pulses good but utterly unresponsive to any stimulus.

“Yeah, they’re fine - breathing’s good, they’re just lost in the sauce. Follow me and we’ll get ‘em in place.”

Neither the droids nor the infosape teleoperating them raise any objections, and so following the corridors back to the habitation units is as easy as finding Eppie and Vidar was. The robots move the two of them into their couches, and Rushing Jaws straps them in and make sure their couches are prepped for burn while the servitors depart the chamber; their empty eyes are off-putting, but Rushing Jaws has dealt with far worse in the field.

Shit, it aint even the worst thing I’ve seen this week.

LoveTheWorm: [Okay, issue resolved!]
LoveTheWorm: [Everyone’s in their crash couches so we’re gonna get this boat cruising on back to where we all just came from!]
LoveTheWorm: [I know most of us are probably seasoned flyers, but I would not be doing my job if I didn’t remind everyone aboard to stay strapped in to their crash couches while we are under thrust. We’ll see about getting the unpleasant part done as quickly as we can and getting the passenger compartments out and spinning as quick as we can, just stay strapped in and ping us over the mesh if there’s an emergency.]

The first tugs of momentum change can be felt through the hull, along with the faintest sound of creaking metal as the ship reduces speed slightly. Then, seconds before it happens, alarms begin to sound before the ship begins to brake, gently putting a spin in order to change its direction relative to the rest of the fleet while burning off excess speed. The forces involved keep everyone pinned to couches as the ship orients itself properly and really begins burning for Mars, the roar of its engines audible through the hull as the work to overcome inertia begins.

Over the course of several hours, the ship’s braking and rethrust takes it on an arc that sends it clear of the swarm before swinging around and settling into a course for the red planet. The AR projection of the ship’s trajectory displays the long loop like a lasso it has taken to break off from the swarm, with a much longer string leading back to Mars, many millions of kilometers away. Eventually, the engines’ roaring fades, and the ship ceases accelerating; moments later, inertia sets in, and the feeling of weightlessness returns to everyone inside the ship. A soft electronic chime sounds off, and AR warnings to stay in couches vanish.

LoveTheWorm: [That’s that! Only other time we’ll have to do anything like that is when we close in on Mars in a week’s time.]
LoveTheWorm: [We’re all stocked up with food, drugs, sims, XPs, the booms are extending now and we should be spinning within the next five minutes for those of us who miss gravity – should be a pretty cozy ride over! Ping us on the mesh if there’s any issues!]
 
NERF NERF NERF​

It was a cold day in hell, because while it took him several tries, Vidar had in fact managed to get the nano fabricator to produce a small nerf gun.

RJ, looked busy in that, he didn’t seem to be able to make up his mind what he was doing and hating every moment of it. The nerf gun dart struck the back of his head, and Vidar moved quickly and invisibly and shot another one off.

Rushing Jaws throws himself into cover, slamming against the wall and watching the nerf dart sail past. With a small pop, he pulls the dart off of the back of his head. He hadn’t intended to hit the wall so hard, swearing under his breath as he realizes the situation isn’t nearly as serious as he was about to think it was.

Earlier that day, Eppie had given him a rifle that fires nerf darts, saying only that “you’ll know when you’ll need it” and refusing to elaborate. He kept it with him, forgetting about it amid the churn of his cravings.

He draws the gun, takes a count, and fires three nerf darts back toward Vidar- or at least where he had been. Vidar shoots back wide and hits the control panel behind RJ, his gun making a comical spring noise as it went.

Whipping around from one side to another, Rushing Jaws guesses at where Vidar is going to be rather than where the dart flew from, casting himself along to keep mobile. Despite how bad his head feels, he smiles.

Vidar takes a dart to the head and curses, letting off a barrage of darts that all go wide. He slips against the 'ceiling' and down the wall, throwing open one of the locker doors to take cover behind.

“Oh shit. Oh hell,” Vidar says with feeling as he tries to put more darts into the gun.

Rushing Jaws laughs, timing his kick off the far wall to sail right by Vidar and tag him at close range with several nerf darts.

“Hey buddy!!” He calls out, his laughter a little louder. He reaches out to take a handhold but – having underestimated how fast he is going – misses it, a sitting duck in freefall.

“What's up?” He asks, nailing him in the ass and watching the dart zing away at an odd angle. “Did Eppie give you that? She gave me the blue prints and told me if I wanted to live I had to print it fast.”

“Oh shit, you fabbed that yourself? High five my sape!” Rushing Jaws calls out, swinging around a corner and thunking into cover. “Yeah, she just handed it to me, said 'i'll know when I need it,' and here we are.”

He's lost his track on Vidar, so he stays behind the corner, waiting for the first telltale shimmer in the air before firing.

“That tracks!”

“C'mon out, knifvar, ya scallywag!” Rushing Jaws calls out, putting on his best hypertheatrical pirate accent. “Doom has come for ya at last, and its name is Ancalagon the Black!”

His nerf gun is trained on the last patch of space where he saw Vidar, ready to move on any shimmering patches he can see.

Vidar starts cackling which gives away his location easily, he shouts back something wich RJ’s translators paraphrase as [Possibly Norwegian]

Rushing Jaws laughs with him, tagging him several times before he loses track of Vidar. His mind feels sluggish, but his heart is light - and right now, he’ll take what relief he can get.

He takes the moments after to try and sneak as close as possible to him and when he’s shoulder to shoulder says; “ So that’s a no? Does my bad viking accent kill your translators?”.

“Yousonofa-“ Rushing Jaws says in a half-laughing voice; despite years of training and hardwired reflexes driving him to tag Vidar with the darts and put space between them, he laughs the whole way down the corridor. “Yeah no, I got an error back from whatever that was. Hoo, you’re fuckin’ sneaky - what the hell kinda language you’ speakin that the mesh don’t know about?”

He is totally exposed, and while his freefall is graceful, he expects and welcomes nerf dart return fire.

Vidar startles and tries to smack away darts as Rj casts himself away- “Really? I’ve been cackling the whole time. How the hell did you lose me?” He fires after him as many darts as his little nerf has left and then gives it two or three more loud clicks. He turns visible and descends after him, “And for the record-I was just doing my best viking accent.”

Instead of returning fire - which, with Vidar breaking cover and out of darts, seems rude - Rushing Jaws lets himself freefall down the corridor to the nearest handhold before catching it and steadying himself.

“Bein in the tank for a few days’s- it’s slowed me down some. Just need some time in play to get back into the senses,” he responds, the feeling of coils around his guts tightening ever so slightly. “Suppose we should thank Eppie for the hookup, huh?”

“Yeah, for sure- but before or after we ambush her?”

Rushing Jaws can’t help but cackle as he throws Vidar a fresh clip of darts: “After.”
 
Mars
Orbit, Pontes Station
​
A week passes, and so do millions of kilometers of deep space. Scars heal. XPs, VR, and old fashioned games are enjoyed. Good times are had by all, and Upload the Nematode races for Mars at speed. On the sixth day, the radio signals from Mars increase in strength and clarity, and the red planet itself is visible as a rust-red point of light amid the void. That point steadily grows and resolves into a planet, and before long the braking thrusters are fired to bring the ship into a reasonable speed in Martian orbit.

578756
Earth was the cradle of transhuman civilization, but Mars, with a population of 200 million, is now its heartland - as the Consortium loudly proclaims. When humanity began its spaceward diaspora, Luna was its first stop. Yet while Luna boasts a sizable population, Mars was the first world humans settled where they could thrive entirely on locally available resources. During the first few decades, the early Martian settlers dwelt in tin can hab units, extracting methane from the local atmosphere for rocket fuel and water from the Martian permafrost, farming in inflatable greenhouses, and eventually manufacturing enough greenhouse gases to warm the planetary climate to the point where modified transhumans could walk the Martian surface unprotected, save for oxygen respirators.

The second phase of the great project of terraforming Mars—husbanding plant life and microbes engineered to rapidly replace atmospheric carbon dioxide with oxygen—was already underway at the time of the Fall. A belt of orbital mirrors helps to heat the planet by focusing the sun’s rays. The spread of plant life is a long-term project that will take several centuries to produce a fully breathable atmosphere, but the nigh-immortal transhumans of Mars are prepared to be patient. A new homeworld is worth the wait. Research into new plants and microorganisms capable of releasing oxygen and nitrogen into the Martian atmosphere at an ever-accelerating pace is a major focus of economic activity. In the meantime, the red planet is a place of startling contrasts, from the stark beauty of its mountain ranges and high desert to the slowly greening bottomlands of the equatorial Valles Marineris canyon system. In these bottomlands, oxygen levels are slowly rising, and liquid water can now be found in canals that had already been dry for millions of years when transhumanity’s ancestors came down from the trees. Mars is a popular destination for travelers from around the system. Many Martians accrue wealth by operating lavish hotels, offering tours of historical sites, and leading wilderness expeditions to the rugged highlands and vast deserts of the untamed Martian frontier.

Mars now sports five vast, domed cities, mostly in the equatorial regions, along with numerous smaller settlements. Settlements are connected by surface roads, a network of near-sonic maglev trains, and air/spaceports from which suborbitals, airships, and near space rockets fly on regular schedules. Thanks to the abundance of methane fuel and gravity only one-third of Earth’s, transhumans on Mars finally got their flying cars as well, and all settlements have well- delineated rights-of-way for these vehicles. Meanwhile, in the wild uplands, planetologists and terraforming engineers dwell in small villages, living the simple life in ruster morphs while seeing to the continued development of the Martian climate and atmosphere.

As a partially terraformed planet with vast tracts of unused land, Mars is one of the few places that can offer new sleeves to infomorph refugees. Martian brokerage houses do a brisk business in the purchase and resale of infugee contract labor, with agreements (for some) leading to eventual sleeving. This has led to a sizable Martian underclass, however, organized as a growing resistance movement under the Barsoomian banner (though the hyperelite socialites disparagingly call them “rednecks”).

In order for the transport ship to catch up with its home scum swarm, shuttles from Pontes are called ahead of time to move both passengers and cargo to within Mars orbit. The team is loaded up on to one such shuttle, having stashed obviously illegal equipment in a crate that vanishes into the shuttle’s hold, before strapping in and awaiting launch. The unnamed shuttle frees itself and burns for Pontes station, Mars itself still barely a dot against the backdrop of space; the remainder of the trip is spent on this shuttle, the red planet coming to dominate the view of space as the Upload the Nematode fades to a torch flare that vanishes from view against the glory of Mars, its two moons, hundreds of orbital stations and thousands of ships visible to either the naked eye or AR tags.

Among the constellations of habitats, Pontes station can be highlighted in AR - although the space station is large enough to be visible, especially as the shutte’s approach trajectory sets Pontes against the rust-red majesty of Mars. The cylinder bristles with concentric rings mounted to a frame encasing the cylinder like a ribcage around the drum, from which jut docking spars and full on drydocks that house hundreds of ships and ships-to-be. The station’s size becomes clear as the shuttle approaches the primary spaceport at the sunward end of the station: as one of Mars’ primary orbital stations and orbital shipyards, it stretches on for over twenty kilometers.

578753
Pontes (Latin for “bridges”) is an O'Neill cylinder originally founded by Brazilian interests and also attracting residents from other South American cultures. It is notable for hosting the largest shipyards in the Mars system. A significant portion of its population works for hypercorps focusing on particular elements of the aerospace industry, from spacecraft engineering to rocket design to construction. While many of the ships are manufactured for Consortium hypercorp clients, the Pontes yards cater to other interests as well.

Pontes is also noteworthy as being the Martian habitat most open towards outer system types. The habitat welcomes numerous Extropian hypercorps and Titanian microcorps, and several neighborhoods are devoted to faithfully representing outer system cultures and lifestyles. It is reasonably easy to work out rep-credit exchanges here; if the banks won't do it, various private operations will. Even the Jovians have a presence in the region known as Little Argentina. Many Consortium hypercorps arrange their dealings with outer system polities here—though most are well aware that Oversight keeps a close watch on activities in this habitat.

Docking takes only a few hours, as the shuttle is small and space is plentiful among the busy spaceport - necessarily in microgravity due to its position along the rotational axis of the cylinder. The shuttle’s AI wishes all passengers farewell, and AR directionals point the way off the shuttle and to customs; as the team’s inserts sync to the local mesh, some heavy data arrives by way of the Eye - false Ego IDs for all operatives from off of Mars, which quickly load up and await processing by local customs. Personal luggage is easily recovered, but the stash crate vanishes into the spaceport’s infrastructure, its hot cargo sealed and safe for when it will be needed. After some scrutinizing and a few pointed questions, the Ego IDs get everyone through customs, and then Pontes station itself is a proverbial hop, skip, and jump down a a spar tram and an elevator ride.

578755

“Well, we’re here,” Rushing Jaws proclaims, beholding with the rest of the team the long expanse of Pontes station from within, not entirely pleased to be back in Mars orbit. On the solid ground of the station and couched in rotational gravity, Rushing Jaws’ cravings are further back in his mind, and the week in the ship has definitely helped him settle his continuity jitters with Māzǔpó’s help. More importantly, the urges to dose have receded in his mind - and thank fuck for that. I didn't think I was gonna last much longer.

[Those last few days were hard, but you made it,] Māzǔpó assures him. [I’m proud of you, RJ.]
Thanks. The thought comes out a little hard, but there is genuine gratitude there; he woudln’t have rallied without the help of his muse and comrades. Feel kinda naked without a gun, though.
[You’ll be okay], his muse says to him. [You know how it’s gotta be around here.]
Yeah. Can’t say I missed it.

Azathothwakes {The Eye}: [Okay, so we know our objective: find the TITAN cache. Odds are it’ll take a lot more than a quick mesh search to track down a lead, so we gotta start soundin’ out leads, contacts, anything makin’ headlines - or bein’ scrubbed from the headlines - oughta be a good start.]
Māz, you got the briefing ready?
[Sure do boss]
Azathothwakes: [(1 attachment: Sitrep)]
Azathothwakes: [Here’s what we got so far. Weird TITAN tech like the gate interface, Gray Xu and anyone who might be an associate of hers, Night Cartel more generally, and the cargo that got here a few days ahead of us; between all that, we got plenty of options. We can start up here, see if we can ID a lead and pick up some extra gear, or we can take our search planetside, but we got no time to lose - let’s get huntin’.]
 
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