[IC] Omniverse: Brink of Annihilation

[Moonman]

Ryoma Nagare

Ryoma, alongside a number of other individuals, was stationed in Saint-Germain Castle; presently enjoying a meal by the pool. Or he would be, were it not for the maids staring at him and making whispered exchanges. While hardly outlandish, the pilot's appearance did certainly stand out amongst the maids and more snappily dressed inhabitants. Between the manacles, ragged overcoat, and absurdly massive scarf, he bore greater resemblance to a homeless man or ex-convict than an ace pilot. Admittedly, he is an ex-convict and arguably homeless, but that is beside the point. Ryoma was a pilot first and foremost, and a damn good one at that.

He'd fought in the Moon War, wasted away in prison for a crime he didn't commit, and survived nuclear armageddon. Yet here he was, sitting in a beach chair while a purple-haired fop spouted off nonsense. All things considered, Ryoma was uncertain whether it was an improvement from being in prison or not. Between the owner's particular eccentricities and the staff dressing like something out of a fetish club, the simplicity of a barren and iron-barred cell was starting to look almost appealing. In spite of his misgivings, the pilot did have to admit that the food was rather good, certainly better than the gruel he'd been subsisting off of on the Moon.

Food and strangely dressed women, a shame Musashi isn't around. The fat bastard would've loved it here. If he made it out alive, maybe I could convince the LWA to make a quick trip over to-

Ryoma's musings were briefly interrupted by the arrival of Lt. Crawford and the further antics of their 'benefactor,' Sandman, that followed. While the discussion of terraforming and seismic activity failed to catch his attention, the mention of a giant monster beneath the planet's surface certainly did. The pilot unceremoniously dropped his plate of food to the ground, sprang to his feet, and sauntered over.

"Oi, old man, Ray, if I heard that right, are we finally heading out? I've been itching for some action since I got here, and I'd bet the others agree."

[Absolis]

Silver

---

"looking into a death. What are you doing here?"

Well that was quick. And rather straightforward. This man was most certainly interesting!

"Oh nothing. Just wandering around. My last friends left me behind, so I'm looking for some new ones. So mind if I help?"

Silver asked innocently enough. It would be an odd request, sure. But there wouldn't be any reason she couldn't, was there?

[Gentlemanvaultboy]

@Absolis

The Kid weighed his options. If she was just acting clueless she was doing a real good job of it. Whether she really had anything to do with this or not he figured it was better to have her where he could see her than otherwise. Besides, maybe she could actually help. "I'd be much obliged." He said, tipping his hat. "Just stick close. Don't know what's out here yet. You seen anything strange around?"

[Sodium]

Kouichi had been watching the antics of the two men in the pool with mild disinterest. It amused him that the one who was supposedly a pilot - what was his name again? Barnaby? - couldn't handle the cold, but his emphatic voicing of that fact was making it hard for Kouichi to relax. He decided that perhaps another position would be more comfortable and help him relax, so he turned over onto his stomach, nodding to his superior officer as he entered. Kouichi's back was much paler than his front, making it gleam in the sunlight.

"Hey, you! There's supposed to be a group of three guys around here, but they've gone and skipped out on me. D'you know where they went?"

Kouichi didn't respond for a few moments, thinking the pilot was talking to Sandman. When Sandman didn't respond, instead jumping into the pool, Kouichi turned to find Barney looking at him expectantly.

"Nah, I haven't seen them," Kouichi responded, turning back away from Barney and yawning. "Maybe you'd have better luck asking someone who actually knows the castle well, like one of the maids? They seem to have some sort of communications devices going on, I dunno..." Another, louder yawn followed, before his head lowered to the seat and his breathing became measured.

Like an old man on a porch on a summer day, he had fallen asleep mid-thought.

---

"Justice never sleeps, nor does Villainy! The Heavens shine upon our venture!"

Kouichi woke with a gentle start, unaware that he'd fallen asleep. "Or maybe your friend could help," he mumbled, not realizing a chunk of time had passed since his last statement.

The smack of skin slapping the cold, hard surface of the water behind him followed by the cold water spraying his back snapped him to full alertness. Something had changed, and he needed to see it now. He spun on his chair to find Sandman rising from the pool as majestically as possible, electronic pad held aloft victoriously. Kouichi thought back to the first time he'd met Sandman - he'd known right then and there that this was the kind of man he'd follow.

"(...) We have to look through the rain to see the rainbow, and that rainbow is the gleaming light of JUSTICE! AND NOTHING BURNS AS BRIGHT AS THAT!"

"So let's burn that sight into the minds of the Anti-Spirals and save everyone! JUSTICE FOR ALL!" added Kouichi, a bit caught up in the moment.

[Zobozun]

"You'd be... Mr. Nagare, yes?"

Ray looked the man up and down. Scruffy, well-built, with a glint of psychosis in his eyes. If it weren't for his way of dress, Ray would have thought he was some sort of mountain hermit. Ray hoped he'd gotten the name right- he'd only been at the base for a couple weeks, after all. Ray held out a hand.

"I'll be in your care while we're scouting out the sinkhole. Need anything before we ship out?"

Hopefully he isn't one of those justice nutters, Ray thought to himself as he eyed Ryoma through his faceplate. A moral compass was all well and good, but Sandman's "justice" seemed a more suited to the Crusades than a modern battlefield- an adrenalin junkie high on a holy battle was the last thing you needed on a recon mission.

[Absolis]

The Illuminus

---

@sgtEasy

you wished to speak with me. Now speak.

The yakuza had gotten back to them rather quickly. That was good. Though, the person who came up on the screen, it wasn't quite who they expected it to be? Just what was it that they were looking at?

"There must be some mistake. We wished to talk to your leader, Banha. Not a representative. I suggest you get him. Our commander is not a patient woman."

The Illuminus, while dangerous, and experienced, could simply not accept that who they saw now was Banha. Obviously, someone so fearsome and dangerous had to be a human. Not some four eyed freak, who had no business being anything but a tool.

[Scrapula]

Barney Armstrong
Castle Saint-Germain

Barney blinked. That certainly wasn't the answer he expected, and it certainly wasn't the one he needed. This asshole had just tried to delegate! The fires of bureaucracy danced a jig in Barney's gut, did the tango up and along his chest, and performed a spirited rendition of a grand mal seizure in his arms. Barney Armstrong lunged forward and hoisted Kouichi up off his feet and stared him dead in the eye.

"Are you trying to be funny, you little shit? I've got no time for shitty little-- Yay rah, Justice! Shitty little tricks like-- like what you're doing!" Barney's voice cracked. "You think you can get one over on me, by trying to, like... fall asleep or something?! You've got another thing coming! I'll fuck you up, man!"

Barney pulled back to punch Kouichi in the face, his eyes wild with anger. Then, he realized something. The look on Barney's face quickly grew softer, and he loosened his grip. Barney grinned sheepishly, and politely dropped Kouichi.

"You know what?" Barney said. "You said something about how the maids 'communication devices', and that got me thinking, right? My buddies have communication devices! You're a genius!"

Having somehow completely forgotten about his previous outburst, Barney snatched a small headset from a nearby table and slipped it over his ear.
"Hey, where did you guys go? The rumpus room? He's got a rumpus room?! Fuck you, I'm there!"

Barney looked to Kouichi, and gave him a commanding stare. "C'mon, you're gonna help me find this guy's rumpus room. You owe it to me after that stunt you pulled back there."

Fully expecting Kouichi to follow him, Barney hurried out of the room and into the many sprawling hallways of the castle. He didn't know where he was going or what the rumpus room looked like, but he did know that he would get there eventually. With that certainty behind him, Barney was happy.

@Sodium

[Blight Bug]

Sandman was certain he had chose wisely in assigning those two pilots to investigate. Certainly they would find out what was behind the environmental disturbances. Whether it the cause was a horrible and strange organism, or his own science, or both, Sandman needed to know. It was important information to know. Well, it would be important to the alien scientist. But for now, he would need to wait before gathering what this information was.

Cradling the electronic tablet in his hands Sandman began a more thorough examination of the tablet. However early into his examination he heard the exclamations of another man, well two, who understood the matters of justice! Truly those men knew the importance of heroism!

"Precisely!" Sandman declared as he kept a firm hold of the tablet. He already risked losing the tablet once, he was not going to do that again. So for now, Sandman had to keep the hand gestures to minimum. "As long as you believe in your own justice, and let it ride alongside burning valor, nothing can stop such
HEROISM!"

With that speech done, Sandman returned his attention to the tablet. There were scientific issues that needed him.

[Moonman]

Ryoma Nagare

"The one and only," responded Ryoma, his face bearing a grin that could only be described as shit-eating, "and you'd be Crawford, right?"

While it was somewhat easy to determine Ryoma's measure as a man by looks alone, the same could not be said of the individual who stood before him. Crawford was of lean build, and seemed to be in good shape, but any other remarkable features were obscured by the suit and helmet he was wearing. Judging by his manner of speaking, Ryoma figured Crawford to be of the prim-and-proper, consummate professional sort. Not the sort of man Ryoma would get along with, but they were usually capable and reliable, which is what really matters in the heat of battle.

Ryoma took up the man's offered hand and gave it a hearty shake, maintaining his ear-to-ear grin.

"I've got the Black Getter and my fists; all a man could ever need. Now, there's something out there just waiting for us to come and kill it. Let's not keep the bastard waiting."

[Gentlemanvaultboy]

@Sombrero@thewizardguy

The Kid quietly followed the man into the gore splattered patch of corn and looked mournfully down at the bodies. "This wasn't a fight." He said, walking around to get a different angle on the girl and whatever poor family member lay beside her. If this had been any kind of struggle the corn would be broken. Somebody had come upon this poor thing and murdered her, the small mercy being it was probably over quickly. Sick bastard.

Then there was the other body, the one covered in those mushrooms, then around at the gore coating the corn. The thought of fungus on the corn made him uneasy. "We need to burn this." He said, looking around to see if there was any sort of disturbances left behind. Broken stalks, holes in the gore coating, boot prints. Anything that would indicate whether someone had been through here and which direction they had run off in. "They have any hard liqueur in the house?"

[Zobozun]

THIRTY MINUTES LATER
___________________________________
Under the frozen sky and constantly shifting blizzards, the sinkhole was proving something of a hassle to find. It didn't help that the planet's environment prevented both satellite and tectonic mapping, and to top it off neither the pair's machines nor the Nova were equipped with more than their respective bare minimum navigation packages, Simply put, Ryoma and Ray were flying blind.

"...You know, it's kind of funny.", Ray spoke as they rocketed through the perpetual storm, "I used to eat that kind of stuff up, back in my Gallop days. Now just hearing the word "justice" sets my stomach churning.", Ray banked his machine left to avoid scraping a glacier, "Justice... It's easy when you're just hunting down some violent, no-name thugs, but-", he sighed, "-ah, never mind. You've got better things to do than to listen to an old soldier's rambling."

Besides, Ray had seen the glint in Ryoma's eyes. There was bloodlust, yes, but it was something more than that. Something deeper. Ray had seen eyes like those. Eyes that qualified you to pilot the R-13.

Those were the eyes of a man who had something worse to fear than death.

"So how'd you end up with Sandman's unit? Pardon my saying this, but you don't seem the type to buy into all the justice talk."

[SgtEasy]

Banha Akiyama

"Hello?"
@Absolis

---

Usually, Banha was courteous. He was gentlemanly and was used to talking with the highest ranks in the galaxy. But right now, it was his day off. This meant that he wasn't in his suit nor was he feeling like negotiating with a new alien race. One of his crests shifted into a raised position. "I am afraid that I am the Banha you are looking for. Unfortunately, you caught me at my day off work so I am not dressed properly to do negotiations or talk about whatever you want. If you want, we can meet in the most populous city on the planet, on the highest tower. But if you came here for less than peaceful reasons" He heard the familiar, faint chime of confirmation from the First Fleet as they positioned themselves under the "shadow" of the planet, presence covered by the newly stolen invisibility cloaks that the Salarians made. The Second and Third appeared from the direction of the sun, warping the light and shining it on the potentially hostile ship. "you have come to the wrong planet. But if you didn't, well then I apologise for assuming so."

[Moonman]

Ryoma Nagare

Finding the beast was proving to be difficult. Most of the planet's terrain was largely identical stretches of ice, only made worse by the blizzard hindering navigation. While Ryoma was a patient man, he would get tired of stumbling across the planet's surface eventually. Thankfully, Crawford was talkative enough to keep the martial artist turned pilot entertained.

"I hear ya. The closest my old man ever got to teaching me about justice was getting back at the guys who ruined his career. Bastards had it coming, but I'd hardly call it heroic." Following a brief chuckle, Ryoma continued. "I don't mind you talking, Crawford. Gives us something to do while we look."

Ryoma paused a moment, both to process Crawford's question, and to make a quick check on the Black Getter's reactor. Still stable, good.

"It's a bit of a long story, so I'll stick to the bare minimum. Where I come from we have Getter Ray Energy, harnessed from cosmic radiation. It let us colonize the Moon, made life in general better, and it brought the Invaders straight to us. The things tried to eat the damn Moon, and I'd bet they wanted to do the same to Earth.

Mankind only won after the world powers decided to cooperate and build 'Super Robots' powered by Getter Energy. I, alongside two other old friends, fought in the Moon Wars, and eventually kicked them out of our solar system. As a reward for my service, I was accused of murdering the world's top scientist in Getter Ray research: Dr. Saotome.

Rotted in prison for a few years, then the UN let me out and told me to kill Saotome, for real this time. Old bastard never actually died, and seemed to have lost it entirely. Then the Invaders came back, and the UN nuked the damn planet. Woke up, found myself on the Moon, built the Black Getter from scrap and wreckage; then once I headed out, turns out the Moon wound up here. The LWA said they needed a pilot, and I couldn't get back to my Earth, so there wasn't much choice in the matter."

[Zobozun]

"Scrap? You must be a hell of a mechanic if you can make something like that out of scrap."

Ray continued to watch the ground for anything that looked like a large depression, occasionally looking up to tune what few short-range scanners the Hyllos possessed, clearing his map of radio-born fuzz.

"For me, I was a hotshot no-name recruit in the Armed Police Unit, Gallop. We were tasked with bringing down an incursion of Mad Cars, machines that had been hijacked by the Bydo- actually, maybe I should start at the beginning. Where I come from, humanity has been at war with the Bydo Empire. I don't know the full details, but from what the lab boys and my old drill sergeant told me, they're some kind of bioweapon from the 26th century, come back in time to wipe out the whole of humanity. So they'd hijacked this place's infrastructure and rounded up a whole bunch of mutants- poor bastards hadn't even realized they'd been taken."

Reflexively, Ray reached under his seat for a pack of cigarettes, before remembering he no longer smoked. Could he still smoke? If he could talk, that must mean he still had lungs and a mouth, right? It felt so natural, being like this. Like his body had always been meant to be this way. He shuddered.

"Sorry. Remembered something I shouldn't have. Anyway, after my Gallop days, I joined the Space Corps. Got my nickname during the conflict with the Solar Liberation League- from what I recall, it came down to conducting research on the Bydo and something about ethics. I was a soldier, so I didn't pay it much mind. Long story short, we won, the Bydo attacked again shortly after, and I ended up transferred away from the front after sustaining life-threatening injuries, which the lab boys took as permission to turn me into... well, this. Can't really complain, since I signed the forms when I was recruited and all, but damned if I didn't give them hell all the same. After that-"

A faint depression appeared on the edge of Ray's map. A glacial valley? No, too rounded, and it looked like it had a steep dropoff after the first twenty meters. More telling, Ray felt- tasted? The telltale pulse of a living creature. The sinkhole. He set the Nova to stand by above the depression as a relay station, allowing the pair to remain in touch with the base if anything went wrong. Preperations made, he slowed to a hovering stop as they reached the edge of the phenomenon.

"Looks like we've found our target, Mr. Nagare. Careful on your way down, the walls might be fragile."