Tergonaut

Pariah Online: Prologue [ closed ]

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Watts // Landon
_{LOCALE // Outskirts of the Dungeon
TIME // Afternoon (current)}

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Landon shrugged and grinned back at Elian. The healer had seen through his plan for what it really was - an excuse to get Landon alone with all the ladies of the party. He didn't really expect it to work even this well, though he hadn't been entirely selfishly-minded in his party division. A team of tanks supported at range by another team was a pretty solid strategy. And with his buffs, he could reinforce the tanks at range with little trouble.

This change in the party structure didn't change things much for him, since Elian was off-limits anyway, and it made more sense to have her close to the ones who would need the most healing. He himself was also surrounding himself with others, giving him maximum safety and viewing angle to check out a combat situation - or the rear ends of his party mates.

That said, when monsters entered the scene, he would be all business. His wrist-mounted crossbow was ready to go, and the lid on his quiver was loose so he could swiftly reach in to get access to his next shot rapidly. The quiver itself was specially spring-loaded, and some of his favorite loads were tipped up a little above the others for quicker access and as a way for him to index his quiver so that he could find what he needed by feel alone. His backpack, with his additional gear and storage space, was all strapped into place such that he could move freely even with the additional weight.

With a final motion, he reached up and tightened up his goggles over his eyes. Landon Longcross was ready!

"Hey, we came this far - not about to turn back right in front of the entrance!"

Hunters of Remnant: Bleeding Hearts

Still here, yeah.

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

Minutes ago, shortly after Ashley's announcement:

Justin did a double-take of Ashley as he looked at her after she had called everyone's attention and dropped what he considered a bombshell. He'd seen his fair share of strange happenings, but he'd never met a werewolf before, or realized they were real. A dozen questions popped into his head, which he had to smother quickly before any of them managed to reach his mouth.

I don't think this world is ever going to stop surprising me, he thought, and I hope it never does.

Nora's eyes widened as an "Oh my," escaped her lips, before she quickly chimed in, "W-well, thank you for being honest and open about your, um...condition, Ashley. If there's anything else we should know, or if there's any way I can help, please let me know."

The truth, however, was that Nora knew this already...and while she was genuinely surprised that Ashley had been so open about her lycanthropy this early on, the information about Ashley's powers was all within the same database held on the scientist's personal computer. At least, everything that Cybertronics Unlimited had observed and scouted out about each lodger before inviting them into the lodge program.

Nora felt uncomfortable knowing so much about each of the different lodgers, even things they would probably not have wanted her to know, and she did wonder just how Cybertronics Unlimited had acquired some of the information. If it hadn't been the express intent of this retreat to help them, she may have refused to accept this assignment at all. But since she was here to help...well, she didn't think it was bad to know as much as she could about them so that she could help them when the time came.

Boxcar wagged his tail as he gave Ashley a fanged smirk. "I thought you had some wolf in ya," he gruffed as he walked right up to her and gave her a closer sniff. "Yeah, I can make it out now. Never smelled a werewolf before. And nobody here's gonna hurt ya..." He turned and gave a stern glance toward everyone else. "That goes for all of ya. I'll give ya a little rule to remember...'No fightin', no bitin'.' You have a problem with somebody else here, you talk it out or take it to Nora, 'cause you won't like my teeth in yer tail end, capisce?"

And, without another word or thought about the threat he just laid out, Boxcar volunteered to help bring Ashley's stuff up to her room, grabbing handles with his teeth and handling the stairs like a pro. It wasn't long after that when he suddenly remembered what he had smelled in the basement, and he vanished down into the depths while everyone was still busy with bringing in other luggage.

Justin, meanwhile, took a moment to scribble out an additional note that he tucked into the unconscious girl's pocket - a note that gave his name, comm number, and address, "in case you need a safe place." He didn't know if she would trust him at all, but he felt a little responsible for her and didn't like that he was leaving her here. This was the best he could do.

Justin then followed Ashley to the garage, where he reached into one of the saddlebags of his Ostrich and turned to her with a shirt in his hand. "A band had a gig a few months ago," he started without preamble, "and I was called up by the landlord to come and fix a speaker that had shorted out just before the show. I fixed it fast enough that it was ready for the show, and the owner rewarded me by giving me a ticket to see the band and a free T-shirt." He smiled at her as he held up the shirt and shook it out for her to see; it was Ashley's band on the T-shirt! "And I've been a fan ever since...so, before I go, would you sign this for me?"

---

At the present time, with Boxcar in the basement and Justin having left
Nora adjusted her glasses as she played back video on her lenses after Ashley had pointed out Boxcar's curious attention in the basement, and found that she had inadvertently captured the wolf sniffing with intense attention at one corner of the cement-bound room. But just as she was about to confirm what Ashley had suggested, she was startled by Samuel's voice nearby - blinded as she was by the video still overlaid on her lenses - and she bumped into the railing and barely held onto it to keep from falling down the stairs. Nora cleared her glasses and let out a sigh of relief. "Oh, sorry, I was...oh, well, nevermind."

She then turned to Sam as she stood up straight. "You're not interrupting, Samuel - may I call you Sam? Anyway, I'm sure we can work on a solution to fireproof your room once we're all settled in and have had a chance to go shopping for some supplies." Nora frowned as she looked back down at the unconscious girl on the couch. "But for now, could one of you keep a close eye on that girl from the crashed ship? I had Boxcar doing it, but he seems to have gone off, and I'm afraid she might still be a little delirious from her, eh...mishap."

To be honest, Nora felt a mixture of pity and a little fright about the girl, not to mention feeling badly that she couldn't convince her of her own good intentions. And she felt guilty feeling all of that as she looked and saw the girl snore open-mouthed and quite innocently.

Nora also still had the girl's shock glove components in one of her labcoat pockets. She was fascinated by the design and wanted a closer look, but she was aware the girl would probably want them back sooner rather than later. Until Nora could figure out what to do with her, however, she didn't want to take chances that there'd be another attack again, and now she didn't have Justin to help out if things got dicey, and Boxcar had gone off on his own...

"Ah, of course!" exclaimed Nora as she took out a small necklace transponder, which looked like a blue tab with red stripes and a black glass dot with a glowing white dot inside the glass. "I can just find Boxcar with this! He's got a tracker in his collar...yes, it looks like he went down to the basement, all right. Kudos, Ashley, for that fast thinking!"

What to do next, though...Nora felt like she shouldn't abandon everyone to go chasing after the wolf, who couldn't go that far without her anyway without receiving a nasty shock. But Boxcar couldn't be left alone forever, either; he was as much her responsibility as anyone else was in the lodge. She teetered on the brink of indecision on whether she should go downstairs to see what the wolf was up to, or finish up unpacking first...

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

It wasn't long after Amie left when Nora, Justin and Boxcar showed up with the girl, who was riding on Boxcar's back. Justin chuckled to himself as he pulled the key out of his pocket and unlocked the front door. "Oops, I didn't realize everyone was gonna show up at once, so I went ahead and locked up the place just as you got here. Here we go...might as well bring along all your luggage inside while we're at it."

They brought the raven-haired girl inside the front door and set her down onto one of the couches of the living room, and there relieved her of her shock gloves. Nora examined her for injuries while Justin supervised bringing in all the luggage inside, and she pulled out a hypo from her labcoat and loaded it with a dose of a pain relief and healing stimulant that she injected into the girl, after the hypo's built-in sensors indicated it would be safe to do so. Even if the girl had suffered a concussion earlier, this should help her to recover more quickly and without permanent ill effect.

The living room was a large, spacious room that served as the major intersection of the entire rest of the lodge. There was a fireplace on the left wall made of red brick that extended up through the vaulted ceiling, and next to that was a door that Justin opened that led into the garage. He disappeared briefly to get an extra shirt for himself from his Ostrich legged cycle, and when he returned, he gestured to the honey-hued wooden floor, walls and ceiling; the variety of couches, bean-bag chairs, and recliners that sat on a single large rug in the middle of the floor; to the mezzanine above where an upper level featured many more doors along its length as it straddled the north and east sides of the second floor of the lodge, where a wooden rail bordered the mezzanine from the floor below it; to the wooden stairs with red carpeting that led up to that second floor.

"Okay, so this is the living room," started Justin as he put his fists onto his hips after he finished slipping into the extra T-shirt with a gaming logo emblazoned across it. "You can see the TV mounted on the wall over there between the fireplace and the door to the garage, an old style that looks weird if you're used to full trivid projectors, but it works just fine, except...apparently the satellite dish on top of the lodge doesn't connect the TV to Segaso City's network, so you're stuck watching the videos until we can figure out a new antenna for it."

Justin then led the way past the northern wide open doorway (to the right of the door to the garage, to the left of the stairs leading up to the second floor) and gestured at a long, low room with a set of weights and benches to the left side of the room, and a workbench and desk with a mixed variety of tools to the right. "Here's what I'd call the rec room," Justin announced. "It's right under the bedrooms, and there was all of this stuff left here from whoever had this place before, so I guess it's yours now. Soundproof, too, so you can't hear what's going on down here if you're in one of the bedrooms, or vice versa. The doors slide out of the edges of the doorway electrically or manually, so you can minimize the noise between this room and the living room."

A door near the workbench area led downstairs into a dark, cement-laden box of a basement, lit only by a single overhead light bulb. Partitioned off by bare gray walls were two large cylinders, one connected by pipes, the other connected by wires to the rest of the building. A fuse box sat on the wall next to the wired cylinder. "Water heater also works as a primary pump to bring water in from an underground aquifer that is also connected to the lake. Geothermal power is used for part of the house power, but most of it comes from this shielded power plant...micro-fusion, surprisingly modern for what was supposed to be an abandoned lodge out in the middle of nowhere..." He shrugged. "Not unusual in many apartment buildings in Segaso, but I'd be hard-pressed to figure out what this place needed this much power for. Good news is, you'd have to drop a nuclear bomb to crack the case on this power source. And your sewage goes down a tunnel that actually meets up with Segaso City's sewer system, so...that's handy, I guess."

At this stage of the tour, Boxcar sniffed at a corner that seemed oddly empty, but he mentioned nothing as the group returned back upstairs to the living room.

Justin then led them into the kitchen, which was through another wide open doorway on the right side as a person entered the lodge from the front door. Smooth granite countertops edged the kitchen, with cupboards mounted above and below, as well as a sink, a fridge, a microwave, stove, and a table with chairs and barstools. "All the appliances work," reported Justin before he opened a door to a pantry area to the left of the back door leading outside. "There's some food and supplies here already, so you shouldn't have to go shopping right away, unless any of you have particularly special dietary requirements."

Then he led them up the carpeted stairs from the living room to the corner of the mezzanine, where the same red carpet extended both ways along the floor and in front of the different doorways on eight side. "Doors to the left of this corner are all bedrooms," Justin announced with a flourish to his left. "So that's eight rooms total." He opened the first bedroom door and showed them in to see a fairly boxy area with a single openable window, uncovered mattress with a wooden bedframe, sheets and blankets and pillows piled up inside a closet, and a small personal bathroom. "There's a closet at the end of the bedroom wing that has extra towels, pillows, and other stuff like that. The bedroom bathrooms are not very big, but they have a sink, shower stall, and toilet each, so you'll all have whatever privacy you require."

"And here to the right of the corner, starting with the closest door, is a bigger bathroom with a tub, a laundry room, and...a really big changing/locker/shower room with a hot tub set into the floor between the men's and women's sides. The laundry room is equipped with washer, dryer, and even a clothes materializer - the styles might not be up to date until you can connect the satellite dish to Segaso City, but it's enough to replace anything damaged or missing, and it'll size you automatically."

The clothes materializer sat just inside the doorway of the laundry room, an open-sided cylinder that a person could stand inside and pull a curtain over the opening for privacy and scan accuracy. A touchscreen on the inside of the cylinder allowed for operation of the device, which gave options for color, fit, and style, as well as a supply reading on how much synthread was available to create the clothing, and a preview of the desired clothing. The top and bottom of the inside of the cylinder projected a light field for full-spectrum body scanning, and when the unit had power, these circles always had a low-level glow to their translucent white surfaces. A series of thread injectors were designed to shoot synthread from above and below a person while a low-level electro-magnetic field combined with air jets to weave the thread into place. A little tingly, but a lot faster than going to town for a proper tailor.

The hot tub room/changing room area was much different than the rest of the lodge. The carpet immediately ended at the doorway, and was replaced with floor, ceiling and walls composed of light bluish-white polished stone, like marble. Light was piped in from skylights set into the ceiling as well as a series of waterproof half-spheres that dotted the walls and ceiling around the room. The hot tub was large and circular in an octagonal setting in the floor, with metal railings leading into the water via a set of built-in stairs that incorporated themselves into the circular seating. On either side of the hot tub was a self-standing wall that divided the room into approximate thirds, with the middle third being where the hot tub was, and each of the left and right thirds having markings indicating men's and women's sides respectively. The standing walls could be walked around on either side of them to enter the tub area, and each changing room had lockers, areas to hang clothes, changing stalls, and open-walled showers. A small wood-lined sauna room sat enclosed against the far wall behind the hot tub, the outer shell masked in more tiles.

"Just saying this now, but this is still a really weird thing to have in a lodge like this," Justin pointed out. "I mean, you already have showers and a tub in the bathrooms, this seems completely unnecessary. But hey, I didn't build this place, I just made sure it was all working."

"And that's the tour!" finished Justin as he led the group back to the living room, and handed the keys over to Nora. "Here you go - this is the only set of keys, but hopefully you won't run into any situations where you'd need more than one. If you run into any problems, my number is on a note on the fridge. I can get here pretty fast in an emergency, but it's still a long drive, so just be prepared for that."

After explaining any answers to questions about operating on-site appliances and functions, Justin waved goodbye and rode off on his Ostrich walker bike, and left Nora, Boxcar, and the rest of the lodgers to their new home.

---

It did not take long for everyone to get their luggage put away inside the lodge. Nora felt the weight of responsibility settle onto her shoulders as she moved her suitcase into the first bedroom, closest to the corner, where she would be easy to find if anyone needed her for anything. Boxcar was supposed to be downstairs guarding the girl - for her own protection, thought Nora, as much as everyone else's - but when she came out of her room, she found to her dismay that the girl was on the couch unattended.

"Boxcar?" she called out from the top of the mezzanine stairs. "Has anyone seen him?"

Boxcar, meantime, had gone downstairs to investigate that suspicious empty area in the basement. The door had been left partially open to the basement, and he managed the light switch with some awkward pawing, and now he sniffed at the corner where he thought he smelled...it was an odd combination of misty sulfur and the tang of ozone, so he wasn't entirely sure if the source was magical or technological or both, but it was definitely coming from down here.

The wolf scrabbled around the corner for a few minutes until he finally hit a hidden button in the otherwise solid granite wall, and a secret doorway slid open to reveal a short corridor to another set of downward-angled stairs. A series of lights built into the ceiling, small as dots but powerful enough to light whole sections of walkway, turned on sequentially as they detected his motion. He knew he couldn't go too far from Nora, but there was something about this lodge that didn't add up, and now he had discovered a secret entrance to...another part of the lodge. Underground, deep underground.

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

@MatthiasAngel@Raijinslayer@Valor@BlessedWrath@Afro Samurai@duskshine749

Okay, because there is some uncertainty about what is going on with the RP, I'm posting my intentions and instructions for how we will proceed.

I am going to do an IC post next to move the plot forward. That post will be done sometime tonight. I ask that no one else post until after the plot is moved forward. This will be my answer to the current conundrum of getting the RP moving again.

I understand that some of you have work or school obligations that are preventing you from posting more often. I also understand some of you are much more available to continue the RP and are feeling held back as a result of others not being able to post as much. If I leave things as they are, it will take weeks to months to get things sorted out enough for us to get started on the plot...and we've already spent over a month just getting people to the lodge.

Therefore, I am going to institute a new policy of posting attendance: if you do not post within 2 weeks from your last post in the RP in either IC or OOC, then I will proceed with the RP as if your character is no longer there, and encourage all other players to continue without you. I may or may not recruit new players to fill your former slot as I see fit thereafter.

However, because introducing that rule well after the RP started is not particularly fair to those of you who have already notified me of school/work concerns making it hard for you to post, I am adding an extra caveat for all of the players that were accepted initially. This rule will take effect for you after you make your next post in the RP.

Furthermore, because it creates havoc to assume your characters are still in the RP without getting any confirmation, your characters will be "invisible" in the posts following my plot-forwarding post until you make your next post. In other words, you may join the plot at any point after my plot post, but until you do, we will assume your character is not there for ease of speeding up interaction and not doing things without your character. This is akin to your gaming group playing a session of a tabletop RPG if you are not there to play as your character; your character is assumed to have been there, but does not actively participate because you were not there to play your character, so your skills, backstory, equipment, etc., are not available to the rest of the party to use without your consent.

If you have any questions or concerns with this new policy, please ask here in the OOC so we can all address the issue.

I am also deleting the IC channel tonight at 8pm Mountain time; if you have not retrieved the logs from it that you want before that time, and if there are no requests to extend the time to allow you to do so, then it will be deleted entirely, due to general consensus that it was taking away from the main RP thread. I may create a new IC channel at a later date after we've established the living situation at the lodge better, but for now, we will go without.

Hunters of Remnant: Bleeding Hearts

Just checking in, letting you know I've got this subbed so I should be notified as soon as a post is made.

Theoretically, anyone else who still wants to join in can do so by popping out of the dropship I put into the scene.

Valour & Vale: A RWBY Roleplay

Just checking in to see about who should be posting next. I dunno if we're doing it in our current order we just posted in, or if it's free to whoever's available in the situation.

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

Just a note: I know we've been using the Discord an awful lot for discussing OOC things, but I figure I should use the OOC tab for any major announcements and whatnot.

I disabled the invite link to the Discord since all current active players have joined it. I don't think we'll really have a reason to have anybody else join the chat, and this is a preventative measure to keep random people from joining the chat. If we ever have a reason to bring someone else into the chat, I can always create a new link.

Just a reminder that our RPs in the IC channel of the Discord are not meant to affect the IC of the actual RP (except insofar as it gives you new perspective on the way your characters thinks and acts). I've mentioned it before, but just in case anyone missed it (what with chat going so fast and all at times), here you go.

We have had a few bumps on the road of this RP so far, but it's already been about twenty days since the RP was first posted up, and a month since the interest check was posted. Not bad for a fairly fresh, unformed idea with a random group of roleplayers who have never RPed together before!

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

Collab post between myself, @BlessedWrath and @MatthiasAngel

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Nora froze at the high-pitched sound that was the response to her attempt at saying hello, the tentative smile on her face fading away in an instant at the sight of this girl’s reaction. There was such intense anger in her eyes, and in her voice...anger, and a determination that Nora, who had been working around superheroes for much of her professional career, could recognize very clearly. On a very deep level, Nora knew that this girl would die before allowing herself to...well, whatever it is she thought Nora was going to do to her.

But what could it be? And why did she only have that reaction after her eyes had settled onto Nora - not the talking wolf, and Justin and Lady Jane hadn’t elicited that reaction, so why Nora?...

Boxcar cringed at the noise of the girl’s gloves priming - unlike the others in the area, his wolf ears were sensitive to frequencies outside of the normal range of human hearing. His immediate response was to growl, though he had to close his eyes as he fought through a painful headache that had come on as a result of the whine of a weapon power-up.

His sense of smell didn’t tell him the nature of the device, which meant it wasn’t anything based on a superpower or supernatural set of principles. So, besides being stunned by the noise, the wolf couldn’t tell when the weapon would discharge, though it reminded him of other devices he had heard powering up inside the labs he had been in before. It was a purely man-made device, whatever it was, and that was just as alien to Boxcar as a superhero was to an ordinary being.

Justin didn’t move - not because he couldn’t, but because he decided it was better to stay close to Lady Jane at the moment, in case she decided to interrupt this tense moment by whipping out her sword again. That, and he recognized the sound from having heard it several times in the past, perhaps in different formats, nevertheless, it was familiar to someone who had been on both ends of similar devices in the past. If he tried to tackle the girl, he’d just get zapped for his trouble, and then she’d have even more justification for feeling the way she did about this situation...that she was trapped, and felt like she didn’t have a way out. Deep in his heart, he wanted desperately to throw himself in the way, but any fast moves might send the wrong message…and then sword. Some days…

Speaking of Lady Jane, she was at a bit of a loss for words at the moment. She was beginning to tire of things interrupting other things, and having retracted her hand and settled her temper, she was all for returning to a more peaceful place, as Justin suggested. Her mind drifted back to the young lady, sprawled in the dirt not long ago. She had appeared to be in much better shape, what with her standing erect and conversing. Amie had been wondering if it was appropriate to formally introduce herself yet again when her two new acquaintances burst through the foliage into view.

Amie clasped her hands and held her tongue as introductions were made and promptly ignored as the girl transformed from victim to threat. She gave the appearance of a wild animal, trapped in a corner and prepared to fight for its life. Instinctively her hand returned to her sword, and she only managed to stop and regain control of herself just as the blade came into view, about an inch past the mouth of the sheath. The encounter with Jaiden had expended an unnecessary level of adrenaline, and her body was not prepared to produce and utilize more of it. She calmed her mind and weighed her options, ultimately settling on remaining silent to let the others negotiate, though she kept the sword in hand.

Before Boxcar could recover and throw himself in the way, before Justin could try to find something to say to defuse the situation, Nora spoke as she splayed her arms outward, showing she had no weapons and leaving herself vulnerable. “I-I am not your enemy,” she stammered, her light blue eyes looking back unblinkingly at the girl’s green ones.

Sam angled her head, to keep Justin and Lady Jane in her peripheral vision. Her eyes kept flicking back and forth between the two pairs of unknowns, as if deciding what to do. Her posture betrayed a total lack of formal training, but much more than that a familiarity with defending oneself that no teenager should have had to develop. Whatever color her belt, there is a language spoken by stance, and hers loudly proclaimed a willingness to use force.

She worked her lips a little, but when the words did not come, her right eye twitched and she began backing toward the ship; one foot at first, and a sidelong glance toward Justin, then the other. She held her hands out at midrange, palms down, ready to latch onto any limb they might give to her.

“You use dogs now, doctor?” she rasped, eyeing Boxcar warily. “Tranqs aren’t good enough anymore?” She added, a bit more confidently, though her throat could not have gotten any less dry: “Worried I might have taken something that might prevent sedation?”

It was all coming back to her again; the white walls and labcoats, the linoleum floors, the smell of...nothing. She could almost hear the clatter of plastic lunch trays and the whispering shuffle of brain-dead patients trudging by. She shook her head and forced herself to focus, but the memories kept clawing their way to the surface.

“...not going back.” she repeated, barely more than a hoarse whisper. “I beat Don Mantovani, and the government, I can sure as hell beat you…”

Boxcar peeled open his eyelids, though he didn’t need to see the girl to tell just how utterly scared she was. Now the anger, the defiance, made more sense to him. They were a cover, a reaction to a situation that was so horrible that it brought sudden and intense rage to the surface...humans had a phrase for it that sounded awfully clinical considering the trauma it usually described. But Boxcar couldn’t communicate this to Nora without more talking, and if this girl thought he was some kind of laboratory pet in Nora’s service…

To be honest, it was kind of frustrating for the wolf. This was getting too complicated, the way that humans, two-leggers, always made things more complicated.

A frown passed over Amie’s face as she considered the girl’s words. They made little sense. The only thing that was clear was a distinct misunderstanding. Either the girl was hallucinating vividly, or there was more to Nora than was immediately apparent. Amie cast a sidelong glance at the young scientist, wondering in what manner she would respond.

Nora suddenly put the pieces together. Well, some of them, anyway, or so she thought. “I’m not a doctor,” she explained with a calmness that surprised even herself, though she felt her knees wobble underneath her. “And even if I was, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Psh,” Sam scoffed. “Okay. This is the part where I decide to trust you and walk right into a wall of hospital security… Sorry, doc; not drinkin’ the koolaid.”

She took another step backward, eyes flitting over to Justin and Amie, then back to Nora and Boxcar. Her head twitched backward ever so slightly, as if to afford her the extra angle of vision to check for the nose of the fighter.

“Now here’s how this is gonna go...I’m gonna get back in my ship, and you’re gonna go back to Shady Pines or whatever, and I’m gonna fix this thing up and split. Whoever paid you to shoot me down will have to find another lab rat to play with.”

Nora didn’t know what to say. She had dealt with people who were frightened by the machines she made before, or made assumptions about her because of who she worked for, but she had never met someone so utterly convinced that she was…evil. “I-I only want to help,” she said, tears starting to come to her eyes. “I’m-”

Justin couldn’t stand there much longer without doing anything. Just moments ago he managed to stave off an international disaster, and now he couldn’t think of what to say or do. There was a lot of baggage here that he didn’t understand, and whatever had happened before, he didn’t want to let this girl stay out here alone with a strange alien ship. He opened his mouth just as Nora started talking, and he was about to say something when someone shouted.

“HEY!”

Boxcar’s stomach growled in the brief silence that followed his outcry, and he felt everyone’s eyes on him. “Look, I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast,” growled the wolf as he glanced between each human in turn, “so, if we fix her ship, we can go to the lodge for lunch, right?”

Sam heard that disembodied voice again; the one from before Dr. Devious tried to recapture her. She’d been looking in Justin’s direction when he spoke, but an eyeroll and a turn of the head brought her back to a search for her new adversary...which ended up being the wolf. She realized in mid-sentence that Boxcar had been the one talking.

“Now you’re just being ridiculo-oooh SHIT!” Sam trailed off, eyes widening at the one thing she hadn’t seen before; a talking animal. An honest-to-goodness talking, sentient, fully self-aware animal. “WHAT THE SHIT.” she continued, her eye twitching again. “IT TALKED. WHY IS IT TALKING.”

She stumbled backward as she tried to cope with the prospect of intelligent dogs. She’d meant to retreat into the hole in the side of the fighter, where Jaiden had ripped off the door to the cockpit, but her heel hit a patch of slick grass coated in that mysterious metal goo, and she pitched backward, arms flailing all the way in a vain effort to latch on to anything that might help her avert the fall. Her head slammed into the bottom of the door frame and she grunted as her lights went out. Just like that, the situation resolved itself, and just as well, too; in its current condition, Sam had no hope of repairing that fighter.

An awkward silence fell over the group. Amie looked around at the bewildered faces, then slid her sword fully back into the sheath with a sniff. “Well that was...invigorating, though it looks as though the threat has passed. Will one of you be arranging transport for her to the local authorities? The poor girl is clearly in need of...help, and this seems to me to be a matter best handled by the law. And on that note, I bid you good afternoon.”

Bowing her head respectfully to the trio, Amie turned and marched back into the forest in the direction of the lodge. She would have taken her time and enjoyed the walk back had she not suddenly remembered her dear assistant, who was no doubt very distressed. He may call the police. Worse, he may call her family. The thought of her mother requesting her presence was more that enough to prompt a sigh of frustration and a quickened pace, and soon Amie vanished from sight. Whatever else happened, she would not be participating.

Nora was the first to recover and to dash over to Sam’s side. She was a little too stunned by the situation to take much stock of Amie’s words, and she focused her attention on the girl with a flick against her glasses to turn on a medical analysis mode. The glasses couldn’t scan for injuries actively, rather they took in everything Nora saw and drew conclusions from that. “She’s not too badly hurt, but she slipped in this silvery liquid,” Nora observed. “Her head fell back into-”

Justin wasn’t there much later, and he quickly lifted the girl away from the silver liquid, then noticed that some of it had stuck to the back of her hood. “I’m pretty sure this stuff isn’t healthy,” he said as he hurriedly unzipped the girl’s hoodie and pulled it off of her. “Looks like it just got onto her hood, and her shoe...maybe we can just-”

As the two of them discussed how they were going to bring the girl back to the lodge to recover and to wash her clothing, Boxcar watched Amie go with a curled lip. “‘And on that note, I bid you good afternoon,’” he mimicked with a snort. “What does that lady even eat - ice cubes? That’s just cold…”

Soon, the wolf was wrangled into providing a ride to the unconscious girl, and Justin handed off the glove sample he had retrieved to Nora - and then the three of them all headed back toward the lodge...

The Lodge Outside of Segaso City (RP is now closed by GM)

Justin let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. I knew that taking this job from Cybertronics Unlimited was gonna be trouble, he thought to himself as he waved at Jaiden as the other man walked away out of sight behind the trees, but I had no idea I was gonna get this involved with the folks here. Still, the pay is too good to pass up, and rent just got bumped up, so beggars can't be choosers...and if this encounter just now was any indication, I'm gonna be out at the lodge a lot for extra repairs.

He turned to Amie and, seeing she had dropped her offered hand, gave her a sympathetic shrug. "Well, that could have gone better, but at least it didn't go worse. I'm sure you two will smooth things out once you get to know each other better...err, Lady Jane," he added at the end, remembering what she had said about the method of addressing her to Jaiden. Then he made a sweeping gesture back toward the lodge with both hands and bowed at the waist; he had no clue if it was deep enough, but as casual as he usually was, he knew that the fastest way to lose his job was to get a complaint filed by an important representative of the co-sponsoring nation of the lodge project. "Shall we head back to the lodge now?"

He looked up toward Sam, but then his eyes widened slightly as he saw Boxcar leap out of the bushes and land on all four feet, glancing this way and that as if looking for danger. Nora managed to clamber through the underbrush as well, though she nearly tripped when her white labcoat got caught on a branch and then slipped free a moment later. Boxcar pointed his nose at Sam, then looked at Justin with a raised eyebrow. "Where'd the other one go?" he asked without preamble.

"Jaiden?" Justin thumbed the direction. "He went to go get some pants and his bike, he'll be heading straight to the lodge."

Boxcar's eyebrow went up a little further, but he seemed to relax after a few confirming sniffs. "I will pretend that all made sense, just as long as you weren't in any danger."

Nora put her hands onto her knees and panted - she clearly wasn't used to running around like her four-legged friend was. "H-hold it, Boxcar, let me catch my breath," she managed to say as she recovered from the exertion and stood straight up again. She looked at each person in the small clearing in turn, ending with Sam. "Oh! You're new!" She flicked the edge of one lens of her glasses as she peered at the girl, and the full list of the lodge attendees scrolled past her vision as she confirmed that this was not anyone related to the lodge. "I'm Nora Minder, head of staff for the lodge," she introduced herself. "And you are?"

Justin thought about speaking up, but he suddenly realized he hadn't even gotten the girl's name yet.