Splicers - I Am Legion - IC Thread

[Psychie]

From her position in the rear, Toni signals on her bio comm. "What's the story, Chaska? Are we clear to move out? It's getting kinda lonely back here."

 

[Sherwood]

Purr what does Chaska send back about the chamber you are in? Do you need to explore more before giving the all clear for Lance and Toni?

 

[Purr]

From her position in the rear, Toni signals on her bio comm. "What's the story, Chaska? Are we clear to move out? It's getting kinda lonely back here."

Chaska has searched for information and so he replies with information. "Blind rats. People. War-mount. Maybe two? Here four week ago." There is a pause as Chaska listens at the passage leading underground. "Two passage - one up, one down."

"You come. Quiet." He looks down the corridor while keeping a low profile. "Sound travel far here."

 

[Sherwood]

Mirgris and Psychie you guys want to post, or should I just say you advance out of the water?

 

[Psychie]

I was waiting for Mirgris since he is next in line. But I can post IC if you want.

 

[Mirgris]

Chaska has searched for information and so he replies with information. "Blind rats. People. War-mount. Maybe two? Here four week ago." There is a pause as Chaska listens at the passage leading underground. "Two passage - one up, one down."

"You come. Quiet." He looks down the corridor while keeping a low profile. "Sound travel far here."

"Okay, we are moving." I respond into the bio coms and move at a steady pace through the dank pipe using the griffons wing for cover as we move together in lock step. This pipe should be safe so we are concerned with making good times.

 

[Psychie]

From her position at the rear of the group, Toni takes one last look behind therm to make sure that they are not being followed. Assuming that there is nothing, she says, "All clear behind. Zero activity. Moving up now."

Toni climbs up as quietly as she can, looking around the room with her trained eye, looking for any nasty surprises that the Machine might have left here.

"Well, it looks like we have two choices to go with. Do we stick to the underground passage with its list of potential challenges, or do we go topside and hope we can find enough cover to get past the various patrols up there? Chief Rybeck didn't say anything about the Trailblazers needing to be on the surface to work, but do we risk the signal loss of us being underground?" She thinks for a moment, then says, "i think that taking the surface route will be our best bet. What do you think?"

 

[Purr]

Silently patting the head and neck of his best birb, Woodstock, Chaska is otherwise completely still. Still and at ease. The Deliveryman's every sense is open and monitoring for danger - a creature of the wild in his own element.

"Surface?" he glances Toni's way and then to Lance's Pretty Bird. "More machine on surface. Better for Pretty Bird, but no for us. ChiefRybeck say nothing about Trailblazer interfere. If was interfere, ChiefRybeck would say to us. I trust him."

Ever careful, Chaska's cloud-gray eyes slowly turn toward the tunnel. "In tunnel, we more likely to find huma-- er, people. Ally. Is good! Maybe they have intel. Could help us." The tail and whiskers on his cat-like Host Armor move ever so slightly. "Lance? You like fly. Fly and battle. Maybe you prefer surface. But if you were Trailblazer, where you wish to be planted?"

 

[Mirgris]

"Tunnels won't lead us the entire way there, they might even start moving us in the wrong direction for all we know. At some point we need to leave the caves and make a bee line through the sky unless we want to start digging straight there. I'm okay with either. My better half can move us fairly quickly either way however if we dig we have to know that we are making a tunnel straight through that can follow us. It would be a risk to leave that and trying to bring the tunnel down without bringing it down on us sounds tricky unless one of you two know a lot more about demolitions than I do."

Lance lays out the problem the face, the sky belongs to the machine. (For now) but the tunnels would mean leaving a path of pursuit that any surviving machines could follow. He pats the large bird beside him a few times. Supposedly an emotionless creature but even plants respond to love and attention.

 

[Psychie]

Toni says, "I know how to place charges well enough if we need to do that. I think that we should move out in the tunnels as far as we can so long as they are heading in the right direction. At the point that we are going in the wrong direction, then we can ditch the tunnels and move on the surface, making sure to leave a Trailblazer every few miles. In any case, we are on a timeline to get to the target and plant the beacons, so we should move out'm

OOC do we know how far the tunnel goes in the direction we need to go?

 

[Sherwood]

OOC do we know how far the tunnel goes in the direction we need to go?

This particular sewer line goes inland for about twenty miles in roughly the direction you want to go, assuming you go along the shortest path. There is a junction at that point where you can either continue on the tunnel path but be going slightly off course, or you can go above ground for about fifty miles until you get to another set of tunnels that will head in that general direction you want to go.

 

[Psychie]

Toni points at the path that continues underground, and says, "Lets move out down here for now, and at the end of the line, we can head to the surface and reevaluate our options. I'll continue to take the tail end if Chaska doesn't mind continuing to take point. If we run into trouble, I can move up fast enough to get into the fight if we need to scrap some machines."

 

[Purr]

Nodding once in Toni's direction, Chaska stares into the unknown tunnel like a soul born to discovering such things.

"Chaska no mind."

He walks, casually at first, then more lightly. Then he and his birb seem to vanish as they attempt to become one with the darkness of the underground.

 

[Sherwood]

The tunnel is dark, dank and unpleasant, but at least you have your enhanced vision that helps you navigate in the dark. Bedsides yourselves, the only living thing down here are a small handful of vermin that are skittering about that all run from you as you approach. There is no signs of any machine intruder.

It takes you some time to work your way down the length of the pipe before you come to a section of the tunnel that has partially collapsed in, but there is enough room for you all to be able to scale the rough slope and get out to the surface. It is starting to get light out with the rising sun, giving you a better look around. The pipe has let you out in the middle of a old city that has seen the effects of the years on it, old and crumbling. According to your maps, this is the remains of the old city of Tamarus, where the population was hauled away to be slaughtered en mass at a nearby boneyard. You know that the resistance comes here on occasion to delve into the boneyard to get new organic samples, but there it's no one here that you can see.

That doesn't mean that there is no signs of life here, though. A keen eye can see recent signs of something coming down the street; could be some of the local fauna, or possibly a machine patrol. You won't know unless you take some time to try and analyze the tracks.

This gives you an opportunity to get some miles behind you at a faster speed than you could underground by taking to the air. There are always risks to doing that, but you are on a timeline to get to the industrial center in seven days to place the organic homing devices. You can try to fly low to the ground to help minimize the odds of being spotted, but no matter what you do, that chance wll never be zero.

What do you do?

 

[Purr]

Chaska grins at the feeling of sunlight and fresh air. He pets Woodstock while he notes the evidence not too far away. Chaska slips into hiding and trying to make himself the quietest, least detectable thing in the city.

Over the Bio-Comms, Chaska communicates with a touch of interest in his voice - a touch of interest and caution. "Tracks. Friend? Foe? No know." He glances at both Toni and Lance as he asks, "You want Chaska look tracks?

 

[Psychie]

Toni shudders a bit as they exit the tunnel, still trying to get used to the wide open sky. There is just so much open to it! It's not like the underground warren of passages that she grew up in. That was the way it was for so many years that even when she decided to volunteer to be as Dreadguard and enter the training course, it was still hard to shake the feeling of being a little bit anxious whenever she would go outside.

Shaking her head to get back to the here and now, she then looks over at Chaska and says, "I would love to notch a few kills on my belt, turning some machine into scrap, but we don't want to do anything to call attention to ourselves before we can trash the industrial center, and if the tracks are just animals, we don't need to kill them, either. I would say we should just move out and get the mission done. Lance? What do you think?"

 

[Mirgris]

Lance examines the sky. "Unknown tracks are a distraction all that matters is speed and distance anything on the ground won't be able to keep up with us anyway." He mounts the large bone plated creature in his matching bone plated armor. He grabs a lance and you could swear you hear a smile in his voice as he leads his griffon up to the two of you streering with his mind and knees.

"Ignore the tracks for now, the question is do we fly high or low? The maximum distance anything can see is based on it's altitude and the curvature of the planet. We can see further away with our enhanced vision from up so high and I am built to see quite a bit. However it also means things can see us from further away it's a game of who see's who first. Or we can fly low, we would be pretty blind of any fight until nearly sword range. We would also be slower the lower we are because of again the curvature of the earth but also having to avoid obstacles."

For all Lances stoic silence and obsession with blades one could almost mistake him for a Dread Guard. Right up until he has to speak as a pilot and show himself as more than a 7 foot slab of violence and barely constrained rage.

 

[Psychie]

Toni says, "I would suggest sticking to low altitude flight. We have to stop and place Trailblazers every six to ten miles and flying high would make that troublesome. We can go slow and use the terrain as cover." She looks over at Chaska and says, "Does your armor have flight capability? I can fly on my own at a top speed of two hundred mph, which is, in my opinion, plenty fast for what we need to do."

Edit- fixed a misspelling because Purr is a noodlehead.(but we still love him)

 

[Purr]

Mirgris Psychie Sherwood =)

Spoiler: This Japanese music helped me write this today.

Arai Akino's "神様の午後" ("God's Afternoon" if Google's translating is correct.)

Toni shudders a bit as they exit the tunnel, still trying to get used to the wide open sky. There is just so much open to it! It's not like the underground warren of passages that she grew up in.

Chaska continues gazing upon the sky as if it were an old friend. He was not raised underground but on it. He saw the sky every day. The stars were often his only friends, twinkling in the night like dreams there for the taking. The sky and the stars had never done harm to anyone he knew.

It is all that lies underneath the sky that he does not trust.

The landscape, the scenery, the tracks in the distance, the tunnels they appear to quitting. None deserve trust. This does not mean he hates these things; he has no time for hate. It simply means he will not let his guard down until well after the mission. The things in life he can let his guard down? They are less than the number of digits on his own hands. To survive and succeed is everything - the code of the animal raised in the wild.

"Ignore the tracks for now, the question is do we fly high or low?

And yet, as he looks back to Pretty Bird, Lance, and Toni, he is reminded he is part of a pack now. A "gorehound" pack ChiefRybeck had said. A "Cerberus." And when in a pack, one must learn to...

"Compromise?"

Chaksa says this single word to Toni and Lance over the Bio-comms.

"I say no walk any more but fly low. Birbs. Those who ride them. Must fly... or they not what are meant to be. But..." he gazes out toward the recent signs of life. "Compromise? Take us over tracks? Want... maybe need... to see. Maybe humans here important to ChiefRybeck and Kraken in future. See and learn what makes tracks, but not follow tracks. Yes?" Chaska looks to his two human teammates.

She looks over at Chaska and says, "Does your armor have flight capability?

Spear in hand, Chaska quietly pats the wing pack adorning his Host Armor, a small grin curling up on his face. "WyldKat haz fly."

The Deliveryman spot-checks and makes any small adjustments necessary to his armory - his paired acid katanas, his burner, his dual heat projection cannons, spore discharger, even WyldKat's sharp and pointy retractable claws.

He grins back to Toni, a new brightness in his gray eyes. "WyldKat iz super! You will see."

 

[Mirgris]

"I say no walk any more but fly low. Birbs. Those who ride them. Must fly... or they not what are meant to be. But..." he gazes out toward the recent signs of life. "Compromise? Take us over tracks? Want... maybe need... to see. Maybe humans here important to ChiefRybeck and Kraken in future. See and learn what makes tracks, but not follow tracks. Yes?" Chaska looks to his two human teammates.

"It may be important but it isn't part of our mission. I'll take us high so we can see further away with our super enhanced vision we can see the tracks and where they lead for 17 miles without having to follow them at all and if they go further than that we should probably focus on the mission anyway."

He gives a small shrug as he throws a leg up and mounts his better half in one smooth practiced motion drawing his lance and shield. He rides with his knees and with the biological cable running from his armor into the large griffon.

"I would suggest sticking to low altitude flight. We have to stop and place Trailblazers every six to ten miles and flying high would make that troublesome. We can go slow and use the terrain as cover." She looks over at Chaska and says, "Does your armor have flight capability? I can fly on my own at a top speed of two hundred mph, which is, in my opinion, plenty fast for what we need to do."

"Everyone is slow to an outrider, but 200 MPH will have to do. We can climb for a few seconds to scout out around us and the tracks before we go low and fast. We will be blind to anything low to the ground but they will be blind to us as well, and I would bet on me and my partner in a close combat fight every-time."

With no more talking the large griffon leaps several feet into the air before flapping it's wings and taking him higher and higher in a rapid climb.

 

[Purr]

As they ascend, Chaska focuses every reasonable sense and power upon the tracks to learn what he can learn. If Outriders like Lance must fly and Dreadguards like Toni must follow a code of honor then Deliverymen must learn.

("Running water never goes stale." - Bruce Lee)

 

[Sherwood]

Taking to the sky, the three of you arc your way up to try and catch a glimpse of the source of the strange tracks you spotted in the middle of the ruins. When you get clear of the ruined buildings and look, you catch sight of a pair of strange mecha that none of you have ever seen before:



Each one is about 12-15 feet tall and are about 20 feet long not including the scorpion-style tail. The two robots are moving at a rather slow speed of just 30 miles per hour, and you can see that they appear to be looking for something. Possibly they are an extermination patrol, looking through the rubble of the ancient buildings to see if there is any sign of people for them to deal with.

Lucky for you, the two machines appear to have their attention focused on street level and not looking up, or else they would have a good chance of spotting you. As it is, you have little time to dive down before you might get detected. Alternately, you have an unparalleled opportunity to hit the two machines hard before they can spot you, if you think you can take on the two robots and win.

What do you do?

 

[Purr]

Chaska's eyes are glued on the two strange scorpion-like mecha!

The Deliveryman in him - heck, the powerful survivor in him that has kept him alive all these years living virtually alone on the surface of the world - screams to get the hell out of the sky and down to cover! Unconsciously, he reaches up and cups one of WyldKat's hands over Woodstock as if covering his beloved birb so will protect them from view.

But Chaska feels they could not be more vulnerable! Just a single glance up by those monsters and their entire mission could end in failure! This was everything he avoided when he was younger - all contact with machines - surveillance only. The vast majority of the time, the machine never knew Chaska existed much less that he had watched them before he became a Splicer. Now those years are screaming at him to flee to safety and engage only as a last resort.

"No engage!" Chaska grits his teeth as he communicates over the Splicers' Bio-Comms in fearful and severely uncomfortable tones. "Bypass! Bypass or Chief Rybeck be angry with us!" he shakes his head. Immediately, Chaska looks for the nearest and best escape routes lest his new team dubbed Cerebus by Chief Rybeck be compromised.

 

[Psychie]

Toni sends over the bio-comms, "I concur. Those are so big, I don't even know if the three of us have the firepower to take them on and win. Lets get out of here and out of sight!" She throttles back her thrusters to keep the level of noise from her jets from being heard by the two machines even as she dives for the cover of the ruined buildings.

 

[Mirgris]

How many will die because we flee?
Are we leaving children to die?

It was so easy to say ignore everything that isn't the mission just a minute ago.
Now with the foe in front of him he can feel heat in his veins.
Strength in his body.

He could leave the team. They can handle the mission without him.
He could drive down and show these two there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

He could lead the charge with valor.
He could save anyone down there in need of saving.

The mission comes first. It has to.
He knows that, an organized force is easy to defeat and war is won in math and numbers.
Cold calculation.

He dives gravity assisting his speed so he is ground level again almost instantly.
Over comms he finally responds once they are low to the ground and heading towards their destination.

"I'm finding them on the way back even if I have to do it alone."