Episode 2: Catch a Tiger By The Toe

Started by Lomari, September 08, 2019, 11:05:37 AM

Melody

June 01, 2020, 04:09:40 PM #80 Last Edit: June 01, 2020, 04:12:18 PM by Lomari
Location: Revenge Bridge

"Are you sure this is a good idea?...I'm not going to be able to actually fly this thing if you get... compromised. We'd be sitting ducks. And also--"

She didn't really think this was a good idea, but the alternatives weren't great either. If they got boarded and the bridge door was open, she could fight incoming enemies on her own but if they got past her and into the bridge, the doctor and their tech specialist would be goners. If she locked them in, she could at least take advantage of his being her home field and take out the enemies while keeping the less than lethal crew safe. Sure, if she got compromised or taken out, they would be sitting ducks, but she'd think of a plan for that later. One thing at a time.

Melody turned her head toward the doorway upon hearing the doctor approaching, her eyes rolling at the sickly sweet, "You summoned?"

"Yes. You felt that rocking earlier? Something's likely hit the other side of the ship. And that something is likely not friendly. There's a significant chance of the Revenge getting boarded, so I'm locking you two in here," she told Missy, more or less catching her up to speed. Mel moved back to her console and entered in some coordinates nearby, although they didn't go anywhere in particular. "Best I can do is this. I got auto-pilot set up to take you someplace. Not sure where, but it ain't here. Just a nice patch of space. Don't forget to decouple from the other ship. If things go bad, Jo, there's a way out. Ain't perfect, but it'll do...sort of...probably. Hopefully we don't find out," she told him with a wink, finger pointing at the three buttons needed to turn the auto-pilot on in their sequential order. Her blood was pumping and adrenaline made her fingertips tingle, which seemed to put her in a good mood.

Setting her hands on Missy's shoulders, she maneuvered her to the pilot's seat and pushed her down oh so gently into a seated position. "You, watch this. Anything looks hinky, you tell me over the comms, with this," she said, first pointing at the open video channel to the Atkinson's bridge, and then to the button above Missy's head that turned on the ship's PA system.

"Now, play nice. Jo's in charge," she told them both, grinning a little and shooting Jo a look before she slipped out of the bridge and slammed her hand on the button to shut the door, "Lock it up," she called through the metal. She shoved her sidearm into its hip holster and looked around, putting the butt of her rifle against her shoulder and chewing on her lower lip. The pilot moved down the stairs carefully, turned to the left, and entered the storage room next to the restroom before hunkering down and steadying the rifle against some boxes. From here she could see the entrance into the lounge and the bottom of the stairs leading up to the bridge while maintaining some shelter and security hidden among the storage. Now, she'd wait. Hopefully, for nothing.
Dialogue Color: Brown

HumanHyperbole

June 02, 2020, 11:01:48 AM #81 Last Edit: June 02, 2020, 11:04:25 AM by HumanHyperbole
Five minutes ago. Buck's ship.

A raucous song thumped through the earphones in Buck Stanley's ears. The truck of a man bounced back and forth and banged his head. He rocked back and forth in his seat and punched the chair in front of him. The man in front of him sat forward and looked back at his partner with suppressed annoyance. The type of annoyance of somebody who absolutely hates your guts but is completely powerless to do anything about it. Buck froze and looked back at his partner, Kyle.

Kyle sat back in his seat and said:

"We're about 3 minutes from contact, boss..."

Buck closed his eyes and started banging his head to the beat again.

"Better sit back! Last mistake of your life, Lyle, I don't-"

"Feel pain? And it's Kyle but like I know, man it's like your thing. The nob thing on weirdly muscular neck. You eat little go-sehs like me for breakfast, I know.. honestly it's never been a point of contention. I'm just here to do the hard stuff you ca- don't want to do..."

Roughly a minute ago, same dumb ship.

Buck was still head-banging, sitting in his seat, facing away from The Atkinson and where his ship was latched onto it. Kyle suppressed his exasperation as he pulled a gas mask over his face. Tapping on the larger man's shoulder, he pointed at himself, waiting for Buck to take the cue to follow suit.

"I don't -"

Kyle cut him off.

"That doesn't matter this stuff will make you puke until you pass out anyway. Just let me do my thing man, it will make the part where you kill everybody like so easy, man."

Buck nodded at the foolproof logic of that and grabbed his mask from the spot where it hung next to him.

"We could also not kill everyone... we have masks and gas."

Buck simply responded as he rocked up with his shotgun at the breaching point:

"Don't be such a yīndào."

"That's toxic - whatever, dude."

Kyle tightened up his grip on an expensive laser pistol he'd customized himself.

Now. The Atkinson's Galley

BANG!

The chunk of wall the mining laser has cut out fell forward from Buck's kick, but before anyone came through, a small grenade like device clattered out onto the galley's floor, about five feet from Breene and the dying Christopher.

William Breene

June 02, 2020, 12:31:29 PM #82 Last Edit: June 02, 2020, 12:55:38 PM by William Breene
Location: Atkinson Galley
BANG!

William ran as quickly as he could out of the room. Stopping just at the threshold to the room he took cover and saw Izak and Holger approaching.

"Incoming, sweeties."

It was just then he looked back into the galley and saw the grenade pop, and start to hiss a plume of black smoke into the room.

"Gas! Masks in the armory in the cargo bay! I'll hold them off. Go!"

The madman took a quick and deep inhale as two figures stepped out into the now smoke-filled room. He slipped around cover slightly, and just as he lined up a shot, Kyle's laser pistol let loose a round just over his head, searing its way through the first layer of the steel in the wall. Before he could react to that, Buck the truck was rushing forward. He only had enough time to try and aim at the big dude before he was slammed to the ground.

"No need to be so forward, handsome."

The man quipped but then accidentally let in a breath of air. He started to gag and cough. Buck got up and racked his shotgun, then took aim at Willy's head for a moment, then noticed the pair in the hallway, Holger and Izak. Before Buck could take aim, Breene grabbed at his belt pulling himself up to chest level, and let himself start releasing his sick all over the man's chest. Buck reacted understandably and threw him across the room onto a table.

The vomiting Irishman flew through the air still spewing and bounced off the table onto the ground. It honestly wasn't far off from how things went at the last family reunion.

Holger Heyerdahl

"Incoming, sweeties."

There he was, at last! The Handsome William Breene. Holger skidded to a stop at the sight of him and smiled as gas began to fill the corridor. The ship they were boarding was being boarded and Holger was ready for a fight. His hands gripped his rifle tighter, the adrenaline filling his veins as he looked for an enemy to kill. He was pleased to see that it seemed as though the Handsome William Breene had dispatched with them all in this area. What a man!

"Gas! Masks in the armory in the cargo bay! I'll hold them off. Go!"

Holger nodded and looked at skinny Izak, who had proved himself useful, no doubt, but was no William Breene. "Gas, Izak! Masks in the armory in the cargo bay! We will hold them off. Go!" Without further hesitation, Holger ran towards the fight. While he had certainly had his fair share of chemical weapons thrown at him during the war - and since - this was unlike anything he had experienced. His battle cry was cut off as the gas filled his lungs, quickly absorbed into his bloodstream - hastened by the adrenaline, of course - and forced him to projectile vomit at the thing nearest him. Buck Stanley, though Holger did not know the man's name.

A stream strong and putrid erupted from Holger's esophagus, covering the already chundered Buck Stanley in another coat of similar but different stuff. While retching, Holger was unable to prevent the Handsome William Breene from being tossed aside and, as the spewing subsided, the Nord stood straight and found Buck Stanley to be roughly his own size. Holger wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes wide with fury. He may not have been able to save William Breene, but he would damn sure avenge him.

But not before another round of full-throated regurgitation right into Buck's gas-masked face. If not for the mask and the upchuck, Holger would have seen Buck grin as he unleashed a savage haymaker to Holger's face, interrupting the spray and sending it showering over the nearby area. Holger managed to keep his footing, though barely, and straightened to return the punch. He raised his rifle to finish the work, but Buck's reaction to being hit square in the head was even less than that of the savage viking. In fact, again if not for the mask and the puke, Holger would have seen a smile. He could for damn sure feel it as Buck grabbed the rifle and twisted it out of harm's way. Buck reared a knee back to his chest and kicked Holger square in the solar plexus, knocking the air, his feet, and another technicolor yawn out from Holger as he fell to the deck.

Barf.
Dialogue Color - Orange

Missy Etheridge

Missy had, in fact, felt the rocking earlier, although she'd failed to think through the wider implications of it beyond the slight disruption it caused to the various tools and impelements she'd been sorting. She'd muttered a vague curse about the rolling, fiddly things, put them back where they'd belonged, and forgotten about it completely. Until now.

"Wait just a minute here! Just how significant is a 'significant chance'?" she demanded shrilly, flitting around after Melody as she moved about the cockpit. "Sixty percent? Eighty??"

She was still indignantly trying to process the risk assessment when the captain steered her into a pilot's chair and gave Missy her marching orders. Automatically, she committed the PA and autopilot controls Melody pointed out to memory, but that didn't otherwise change the fact that she had no idea what she was looking at or what she might be expected to raise the alarm about. She would (possibly literally) die before admitting ignorance, however, so went fishing for more information with the only weapon she had: snark. "Hinky, huh? Is that a technical term?"
Dialogue color: Cornflowerblue | 6495ED

Talk less. Smile more.
Never let them know what you're against or what you're for.

William Breene

Location: Atkinson Galley

"I knew I'd end up covered in vomit today... just not-...no this is about right."

The green-faced former XO pulled himself up and nearly slipped, between all the fire retardant everywhere and his own sick, it was getting harder and harder to stay on your feet. Though now with all the puke and gas, if you were mad about the popcorn smell, at least that was taken care of. Kyle was ready and next to Breene, laser pistol aimed at the sick and surly man's head.

Through his mask, the more reasonable of the pair said:

"Dude, Buck will seriously kill you, we're just here for the guidance chips. Just lay down and keep puking and we'll leave you for the feds..."

The spacer retched and buckled over slightly, communicating his difficulty with staying on his feet. The hiss of the grenade was slowing and starting to sputter. Willy was a bit screwy, prone to violence and crime, but he also wasn't as stupid as his non-stop chicanery implied. Playing for time he pleaded:

"Please don't hurt me... "

He played up his dry heaving and retching sounds. Not only was he paying attention to the nearly spent gas canister, he knew his ship. The life support system would filter out anything but oxygen and nitrogen, the room was already starting to clear of its light fog.

"I got kids man... Possibly..."

Kyle groaned and looked over at the two men still knocking each other around. Buck, still in the midst of his brawl with Holger, paused momentarily, taking for granted that he'd disabled his opponent.

"Quit playin' wit your food, Kyle! Just kill him and find my micro processors!"

Kyle rolled his eyes back so far into his head they could have left his body. They were guidance chips. And pretty much all processors have been micro-processors for centuries. Holding back an explanation about how Guidance Chips are much more like GPUs than CPUs, something occurred to him. His eyes darted down just as Willy Breene was slapping the laser pistol out of his hand.

"Go-se! Buck!!!"

Next, the Atkinson's ex-XO punch knocked loose the polymer eye protection in Kyle's mask. Stumbling back, slipping on the vomit and fire retardant covered floor. Slamming head first onto the ground, the wiry man was sent straight to dream and possible brain-injury land. Pivoting around in place, still unsteady on his feet from the gas and the fight, William instinctively tried to reach for his pistol's holster, now empty, his gun clear on the other side of the room.

Rather than go for the gun and possibly slip like Kyle, Willy bolted forward only a couple of steps before launching himself at Buck and wrapped his arms around him in a tackle he refused to let go of. As the two tussled on the slimy ground, Buck's shotgun slipped out from the pile of humanity, conveniently in Holger's direction.

HumanHyperbole

June 17, 2020, 04:26:55 PM #86 Last Edit: June 17, 2020, 04:32:37 PM by HumanHyperbole
Location: The Atkinson Galley

The low hiss of the gas-grenade stopped with a distinct but subtle fizzing sound. Smoke was now nearly cleared from the room. Buck's shotgun skidded to a stop just in front of Holger. It would seem timing and fate were now tipping in Willy and the large Nord's favor as they brawled and puked their way through a meet-cute.

Location: Lower level / Commercial Storage Level

Down the stairs, Izak would find the cargo bay was lined with a room full of neatly stacked, and clamped down steel cargo containers. On the wall to his left, the ship's armory was nearly completely depleted of weapons. Save the handful of masks. But before the former purple belly could leave the room with the masks, a klaxon sounded throughout the former Alliance vessel. He'd recognize the sound from drills.

"Warning: Emergency scuttling procedures have been initiated. This is not a drill. Warning: Emergency Scuttling procedures have been initiated..."

The warning started blasting out of every speaker in the ship, on repeat, alternating every two cycles between English and Mandarin.

With the Revenge still coupled with the Atkinson, her newly re-minted Captain would have been able to clearly hear it from her perch.

Melody

"Warning: Emergency scuttling procedures have been initiated. This is not a drill. Warning: Emergency Scuttling procedures have been initiated..."

Melody was still running through situations and solutions in her head, as well as mulling over whether or not it would be wrong to lock their doctor in a cabinet, when she heard the announcement radiate through her ship from the one they'd coupled with. Her brows furrowed, chin clenched, and she lowered the gun's muzzle slightly. "Gāisǐ dì dìyù," she muttered to herself, standing and kicking a box before moving to the storage room's threshold. The butt of the rifle back to her shoulders and made her way through the ship, checking corners and walkways as she hustled the hell over to the airlock joining their ships. Cautiously, she made her way through the tunnel between them, pausing to glare at the haze dissipating from the interior of the enemy ship. She backpedaled enough to stand near the button that would close the airlock doors and retract the tunnel, gun pointed toward the opening.

She pressed a button on the comms panel on the wall, reaching out to the frequency of the Away Team's comms units,"Holger! Izak! Ràng nǐ de pìgu huí dào zhèlǐ! Bring the Idiot with you, or don't! That ship is going to blow! Get back here now, or we're all tā mā de toast!"

With that button released, Melody reached over to push her elbow against the comms system, sending a message to the bridge, "Jo! On my mark, you hit that auto-pilot button as hard as you damn well can. Prissy, buckle in," she snapped. Then, she waited. Either for her men to return, or for someone to show up in her line of sights.
Dialogue Color: Brown

Holger Heyerdahl

June 19, 2020, 12:15:20 PM #88 Last Edit: June 19, 2020, 01:09:37 PM by noseatbelts
His rifle knocked out of reach and useless to him, Holger rolled off his back and onto his hands and knees, trying to will his weakened body back to fighting shape. It was difficult. He no longer felt immediately sick, just woozy and short of breath. And if he tried to breath deeper, it hurt, and Holger reckoned the big man's kick might have cracked a rib. "Izak." He said, though not necessarily loud enough for the sailor to hear even if he was still close by. "Nevermind the masks."

Buck Stanley stomped over and grabbed Holger by the hair on the back of his head. The Nord was pulled off of his hands to stare directly into Buck Stanley's mask. "I'm gonna enjoy this, beardy." Buck said, grabbing Holger with his other hand by his whiskers and yanking him to his feet. Holger tried to resist but dammit, it hurt like a sonofabitch. Once standing, Buck pressed Holger into the nearby bulkhead with all his might, the steel slamming into Holger's back. And that hurt, too. Buck's knee was next, into Holger's midsection and yup that was a cracked rib, alright. Holger looked up to see Buck looming over him, shotgun at the ready, and wondered if his brother Fridjtof was right about Valhalla when the Handsome William Breene intervened, grabbing Buck around the neck and pulling him away from Holger, but not for long. WIlliam Breene may have been Handsome, but he was no match for the hulking Buck Stanley. Before being summarily tossed away, Breene did, however, manage to disarm Buck of his shotgun. The weapon slid across the floor, gathering all manner of viscera and goo before stopping somewhere near where Holger tried to catch his breath.

Holger's vision cleared just in time to see Buck return to finish the job. "Stop stop stop stop..." Holger said, holding his hands up as if in surrender.

Buck laughed. "Based on the size of ya, I thought you'd be more of a challenge. Now you're beggin' for mercy? Pathetic."

"You don't understand."

"What's that?"

"You are doing it wrong."

Buck didn't have time to register before Holger, suddenly full of Viking Vigor, rushed into Buck's torso with his shoulder and flipped the brute tail over teakettle onto the deck behind him. Buck landed on his back with a groan. Holger spun and reached down and grabbed Buck by the shoulders and flipped him up off the ground and into the bulkhead. The big man fell back to the deck, dazed from the quickness and ferocity of the attacks. Holger wasted no time and slammed the heel of his boot down on Buck's face, smashing the gas mask and a good portion of the man's nose and orbital socket in the process.

Holger stood over Buck, assuming victory. "That is how you hurt someone. I am Holger Heyerdahl, perhaps you have heard of me? No matter. If you have not, you will remember me for the rest of your life. Which is not long." Holger made as if to finish the job, and Buck held up a hand. Holger didn't see the harm in it, after all, he had won, and relented.

Buck removed his mask and revealed his face, broken and covered in blood but smiling. "Did you say Holger Heyerdahl?"

"That is my name."

"God damn I have heard of you. Shit, son, you got yourself a reputation. I heard back in, what, '15 you was working with, what was it, Gordon Long and his fellas over outta Jiangyin? You killed-" He snapped his fingers trying to remember a name.

Holger smiled and thought back on fond memories. "Fortuna. Bat Fortuna."

"That's the one. You sure live up to the stories, I'll tell you what."

"Thank you." Holger couldn't help but be flattered. "What did you say your name was?"

"Buck Stanley."

Holger's mouth fell agape. "Oh. My. Gosh, Buck Stanley! The Unkillable Man!" Buck seemed honored. "Are you still with Jimmy Russo?" Buck nodded. "What a treat this is... So that did not hurt at all? You felt nothing?"

Buck shoot his head and laughed. "Not a lick."

Holger threw his head back and laughed and Buck joined in. "The Unkillable Man..." Holger shifted his foot and the telltale sound of gun metal on grate sounded from beneath the slop. Both he and Buck looked down and saw Buck's shotgun, but Holger was much quicker. He didn't hesitate to fired into Buck's chest. "It was nice to meet you." He stepped over Buck's fallen form and racked another shell as Melody ordered them to vamoose. "I think we should be going William Breene."
Dialogue Color - Orange

Izak Archer

June 20, 2020, 02:03:47 PM #89 Last Edit: June 25, 2020, 07:21:13 PM by Izak Archer
Izak had just popped back up from the armory as Holger told him not to bother with them. Witnessing to underworld legends clash in a melee of fantastic personal destruction.

Then they shook hands and just like that, two legends met, and the unstoppable force broke itself on the immovable object. Izak would say he missed the fun, but that seemed rather...less than necessary. Well, not everything can be the latest adventure novel. The last few moment had been a hectic almost cartoon like ball of mayhem, but it seemed like they were through here.

He looked at Breene looked at Holger. Back at the moron on the floor, and back to the two men. "Well then, no sense in standing here then, let's go!"

Melody

June 25, 2020, 08:41:08 PM #90 Last Edit: June 25, 2020, 08:42:18 PM by Lomari
Location: The Atkinson

Mel chewed hard on her lower lip, the skin raw from the beating it took as teeth ground into flesh. She stepped through the airlock slowly, ducking down a bit as she entered the Atkinson, gun moving left to right as she got her bearings on the situation and took in the surroundings. And the mess. Baby blues eyes the bodies and the liquids on the floor before she stood up carefully, the alarms grating on her nerves and muffling her senses. She could hear movement and voices further down the shaft of the ship, so the pilot quickly turned in that direction and hurried toward them, the butt of her rifle held steadily against her shoulder, every corner or crevice checked for threats on her way there.

As she approached, Holger, Izak, the Moron, and two downed combatants entered her field of view. Her brows furrowed deeper. Everyone (save Izak) was covered in a plethora of somethings, and the smell was enough to make her eyes water. Irritated and on edge, she lowered her rifle enough to jab a finger skyward, toward the announcement, "Do you not hear that?" she snapped, mostly at the Breene man. "Was there some more tuīxiāo you guys want to do before we head out? Maybe we could have a tea party? Braid each other's hair? Before the gorram lèsè wūshuǐ chí ship explodes?!" she asked, gradually yelling louder as she continued.

With that, she reached out to grab Holger's hand, yanked it back at the slimy feeling she met, then slapped her hand heartily on his forearm instead to get them all going. "Go!" she shouted to the group, leading the charge as they made their way back down the hallway, the pounding of their boots drowned out almost entirely by the woman politely informing them of their impending doom. There were a couple of moment where she lost track of the Breene Idiot, but when they reached the airlock, he was back. She tucked that away for later, to add to the long list of things to punch him for.

Location: The Revenge

As they squeezed through the tube connecting their ships, Mel jostled free and slammed her hand on the button to shut the airlock doors and retract the exterior tunnel. Once she felt the ship rock as they disconnected, her hand hit the comms button, muzzle of her gun facing the floor now, "Jo! Press the button! Now now now now!" she shouted, not bothering with a please and thank you.
Dialogue Color: Brown

HumanHyperbole

June 25, 2020, 09:20:03 PM #91 Last Edit: June 26, 2020, 06:36:46 AM by HumanHyperbole
The Atkinson Galley

"HASH BROWNS!!"

Kyle suddenly sat up. He looked around through his broken gas mask. The smell! And it was in his mask!

"Oh, is that from me? Gross. I'm glad I didn't Jimi Hendrix... Buck!!!"

Nearly slipping as he got up, he was glad getting knocked out wasn't like in cortex vids generally. It had only been a minute or two but everybody was gone or dead... or dying... Kyle looked down at buck. He'd taken a shotgun round to the chest, and a whole bunch of other injuries in the brawl with Holger. But still breathing. For a second he tried lifting him up.

"Nope."

As Kyle dropped Buck, he was about to try and muster the strength to say something. The shotgun slug to his chest was making speaking a little difficult. As the self destruct warning wailed, Kyle was trying to think of a way to drag Buck out with a rope or something when his cortex unit buzzed. Some of his "colleagues" were awaiting on a vid call.

Popping out in a hologram from his thin glass-like device appeared Yank and Valiente

"Ay! Where's Jimmy's chips at?!"

Valiente cut straight into it. Yank, however, was ignoring the self destruct warning and cracking wise. He shouted to somebody in the background.

"You got the guac?"

Kyle shook his head.

"Buck did his thing... we we're supposed to just like out-bid the other guys right? Then just maybe fight them? Buck was gonna kill EVERYBODY."

Yank and Valiente stared at him stone faced.

"Oh okay I get it you guys water stuff down so I don't complain when we're planning stuff. That's ... whatever. You guys force me to do this stuff anyway. What do I do with Buck?"

Yank popped off first this time.

"Strike three!"

Valiente just nodded with gravity. All the men speaking knew what that meant within the Russo organization. Jimmy didn't suffer a broken cog in his machine.

"Well shit. I guess he's tired of patching up Humpty Dumpty."

Scampering back into his ship, Kyle started firing up the engines. Meanwhile inside, Buck was finally mustering up the words in response to all of those who'd just been speaking about him like he wasn't there. All jacked up just from following his beloved father figure's orders once again. Now being left to die by his own. All because the Revenge crew wouldn't get out of the way or die.

"Y'all can't kill Buck Stanley..."

He rolled to the side, but, couldn't get on his feet, and collapsed, coughing up blood. The armor Jimmy got him was crap.

"Warning: Emergency scuttling procedures have been initiated. This is not a drill. Warning... Scuttling procedures will commence in sixty seconds... Warning... Scuttling procedures will commence in fifty nine seconds..."

The Revenge Airlock

Holger, Izak, Melody, and... The Moron were all safely aboard a ship that wasn't going to explode. Hopefully. As the clock ticked down closer to boom, before Jo pressed the magic button, the last Atkinson crew member finally revealed themselves. Christopher, still clinging to life, despite the blood loss from getting shot up below the waist by Breene. He tried to override the controls but to no avail. Breene had set in motion the self destruct sequence the minute he saw the Revenge on his radar.

"Breeeeeeeennee!!"

While Breene was a killer and a crook. The Atkinson crew were worse, and the people they'd all just crossed: some would know them as "The Russo Gang" from true crime vids. The smash and grab crew were all now "legitimate" businessmen with a mining empire and private security contracts popping up all over the outer colonies. And the Revenge crew had just stolen from them and set the booty ablaze.

Joakim Soong

Location: Revenge Bridge

Jo bit his tongue and did as he was told. He wished Melody luck, locked the door behind her and got back to his position next to the buttons that would activate the auto-pilot. So he didn't like Missy, big deal, there were more important things at stake here. He would simply be the bigger person and not lower himself to her level. He managed to stick to that resolution... for all of thirty seconds.

"Hinky, huh? Is that a technical term?"

"I don't know, is passive aggression a mandatory subject in med school or did you just take it for the extra credit?" The grumble escaped his lips before he could stop it, propelled by the rapidly escalating stress of the situation.

Missy herself wasn't exactly immune to the escalating stress. Teeth gritted behind an anxious smile, she did her best to project a calm surface, but things were rapidly spiraling out of even her thin pretense of control.

"I tested out of it, actually," she snapped back at her mandated partner, turning the full wattage of her expression on him. "Turns out I have a natural talent for— Gǎo shénme guǐ does that mean?"

Her attention whipped back to the feed, which was growing more anxiety-inducing by the second. Jo took the comeback he'd been about to hurl at her and filed it away for later. He got up from his station and approached the pilot's seat, leaning towards the monitors and trying to make out what was happening. The feed, which wasn't the clearest to begin with, was becoming even more obscured by a hazy, black mass of...

"Smoke. They've got smoke bombs." At first, the doctor and the hacker were only able to vaguely make out figures moving through the smog, but as the ship's air filtration systems worked their magic, the air began to clear up and reveal a better view of the action. Jo watched the (literally) messy fight in a kind of mesmerized disgust until Melody's voice crackled through the comms and pulled him back to reality.

"Jo! On my mark, you hit that auto-pilot button as hard as you damn well can. Prissy, buckle in."

"We'll finish our talk later." He shot Missy a meaningful glare before rushing back to his station and preparing for the captain's next orders.

For the purposes of immediate survival, Missy decided that the audio had malfunctioned and she'd simply misheard the captain calling her "Prissy." Likewise, Jo's threat of further conversation with him could be tabled for another time.

For now, she took the better part of valor and sensibly got buckled in. Her only hope was that Jo didn't notice how her white and shaking fingers fumbled the buckle on the first attempt, or hear her mutter under her breath, "I'm going to die surrounded by sīshēngzǐ zuìfàn hé báichī de hòudài..."

Lucky for Missy, Jo had already focused his attention on the task at hand. When Melody gave him the go-ahead, he quickly punched in the auto-pilot sequence, praying that all the crew members he actually liked had made it on board and that he wasn't about to send himself drifting through the Black with the most annoying person he'd met in recent memory.



post co-written by Scout and kittyrex
Dialogue color: teal

HumanHyperbole

July 06, 2020, 09:42:37 PM #93 Last Edit: July 06, 2020, 10:13:46 PM by HumanHyperbole
The Revenge was like a bullet. Before the artificial gravity could start taking some of the edge off, it was normal to still experience some less than comfortable g-forces. As the ship rocketed away and the inertia stopped pressing the Jo and Missy down into their seats anymore. However for those who'd just ran back aboard the ship, and their new guest, they were all on their feet. All of which had a fine sheen of fire retardant among on the souls of their shoes.

Holger, Breene, Izak, and Melody were all piled on top of each other after all falling back in the same direction. It was a big, slimy, surly pile of humanity. As the group untangled themselves from each other, Kyle was flying off on what Buck Stanley had considered his ship.

While the ex-con was just getting on his feet and grinning like an idiot, ready to spout of another one of his lines, the ship was rocked again by the explosion of the Atkinson. They wouldn't have noticed given the lack of sound and shock-waves in the black. But a small chunk of the exploding vessel's hull smacked into the hull just hard enough to send Breene falling back right onto his butt.

While there are no shock waves in space. There are still consequences. What had their former Captain set in motion today? And why was a gang of corporate outlaws after them? Captain Romero wasn't present to explain, but they did have a slimy Irishman they could ask a few questions...


TO BE CONTINUED IN EPISODE THREE

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