I'm doing way too many things these days, honestly. I'll try to squeeze in a post within a week of needing to respond, ergo soon given it's been 5 since your post.
Ashgan
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“Slick suit,” Cass commented when Mavriq emerged from the containment barrier. She was leaning against the wall, arms crossed and the front of her helmet removed so that her face was revealed. “But very thin. These weren’t made for combat.”
On her usual sorties with Mercury, Cass had been issued a much heavier exo-suit variant with multi-layered armor plating and motorized motion assistance. As extreme hardware, these combat armors effectively demanded their user to retain peak physical condition in order to remain practically usable. Having grown accustomed to entering Derelict in what was essentially a personal tank suit, she felt very exposed in the suit Origin provided. At least she was going to be quick on her feet; keeping an eye open for cover would be vital.
“They are Origin military space excursion suits,” Mavriq explained as he rotated the dog on the air-tight door that lead to the decompression ramp linking the lab to the shuttle, “very safe if you’re dealing with a riot or personal-grade armaments, but not approved for combat. Still, the flexmesh steel layer will stop a knife or low-caliber bullet.”
Cass lined up beside him with a disapproving sneer. “I’m not concerned about knives or small-arms fire. You won’t be either after today’s sortie, lieutenant.” She nonchalantly snapped the front of her helmet back on and waited for the bulkhead to open.
Mav ignored the boorish nature of Cass’ remark, as her concerns were likely to be assuaged once she previewed the shuttle’s armory. With him and her in the airlock, the pressure seal hissed, then they proceeded into the shuttle. Once in there, he pointed to a rather impressive array of firearms gel-sealed to the aft wall -- gauss cannons, singularity grenades, plasma rifles, and even a pair of shoulder-mounted auto-targeting mass drivers.
“Press your thumb against the bio-scanner and it will release the gel pressure enough for you to remove one of the armaments,” he explained.
“Shit,” Cass grinned at the weapons rack, “I didn’t think Origin would shell out for this kind of hardware. Is this a standard loadout for you guys?” Seemingly oblivious to the rest of the shuttle’s interior, she remained in front of the armory to inspect each firearm with great interest.
“I’m not sure,” he shrugged as he sat down at the helm and awakened the auto-pilot, “but hopefully most won’t be necessary. Our mission is to answer questions, not paint the walls with the shadows of those who once were. Ideally, we’ll be able to limit our actions to crowd control and suppression.”
Cass peered behind herself: “You’ve seen my shoulder - I don’t fire the first round. But in my experience it’s better to be over prepared than not. I would hate to bring a knife to a gunfight.” Finally letting go of the armory, she stomped to his side. Her legs really did not lend themselves to subtlety of any kind.
Mavriq shrugged, apathetic to the matter. After all, there were no armies confronting them. Just some disorganized cultists. The bigger threats, he felt, were the scavengers; opportunistic and often lawless bad actors who wouldn’t think twice before stripping down and parting out another group’s operation. On that particular front, the giant Origin emblem emblazoned on the shuttle’s hull was an effective deterrent. Presently, the docking seal detached and they drifted a safe distance away from MOS, at which point the shuttle androgynously intoned, “Please secure yourself for transit to Derelict’s primary exploitation shaft, estimated travel time 11 minutes.”
Fortunately, the trip down was uneventful. He didn’t even bother looking out the viewport to behold the panoply of drones and ships zooming to and fro like fireflies in the night. It was, of course, an act. He was super excited, but suppressed it with an intense focus on his mission updates. Feurtes’ report, for instance, was of particular interest to him, but at the end he was merely glad his team member was whole and alive.
When they docked and exited the shuttle, Feurtes saluted. The MRS drones idled nearby, one already in the driver seat of the buggy. He could barely hear himself think, what with all the ambient noise that managed to penetrate even through the protective layers of his spacesuit. Quite unsettling, actually. He never was a fan of industrial blare. Feurtes’ mouth moved, but Mav wasn’t sure what was uttered. To compensate, he amped up the audio intake and programmed his earbuds to even more aggressive noise cancellation, then attempted:
“I read your report, Officer Feurtes. It seems all, more or less, went well given the circumstances we are operating under. I expect you are eager to get back to more familiar territory?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. Not much rest to be gotten down here. Permission to board the shuttle and return to MOS?” replied Feurtes.
Mav nodded, a moment passed, then he remembered to utter the magic phrase, “Permission granted.”
Feurtes boarded the shuttle and in what seemed a mere moment later it lifted off. The kind of haste usually reserved for someone on the run for his life or looking to get his dick wet. For Feurtes’ sake, he genuinely hoped it was the latter.
“Well, Cass,” Mav gestured toward the buggy, “ready to roll?”
“Hmpf,” she scoffed, taking her eyes off the ruined majesty of the exploitation shaft’s thorned walls. “Are you?”
Her right hand firmly placed upon a high-caliber gauss rifle which was fastened to her suit with a band, she almost prowled towards the buggy. No longer carelessly swaggering where she went, the moment Cass had left the shuttle her senses perked up, her neck hairs stood on edge. Her iron legs carried her with a silent grace that would have been difficult to imagine on the MOS. She swung herself into a rear seat of the buggy in a single motion, eyes sharp on the perimeter. If something moved, she wanted to see it.
On her usual sorties with Mercury, Cass had been issued a much heavier exo-suit variant with multi-layered armor plating and motorized motion assistance. As extreme hardware, these combat armors effectively demanded their user to retain peak physical condition in order to remain practically usable. Having grown accustomed to entering Derelict in what was essentially a personal tank suit, she felt very exposed in the suit Origin provided. At least she was going to be quick on her feet; keeping an eye open for cover would be vital.
“They are Origin military space excursion suits,” Mavriq explained as he rotated the dog on the air-tight door that lead to the decompression ramp linking the lab to the shuttle, “very safe if you’re dealing with a riot or personal-grade armaments, but not approved for combat. Still, the flexmesh steel layer will stop a knife or low-caliber bullet.”
Cass lined up beside him with a disapproving sneer. “I’m not concerned about knives or small-arms fire. You won’t be either after today’s sortie, lieutenant.” She nonchalantly snapped the front of her helmet back on and waited for the bulkhead to open.
Mav ignored the boorish nature of Cass’ remark, as her concerns were likely to be assuaged once she previewed the shuttle’s armory. With him and her in the airlock, the pressure seal hissed, then they proceeded into the shuttle. Once in there, he pointed to a rather impressive array of firearms gel-sealed to the aft wall -- gauss cannons, singularity grenades, plasma rifles, and even a pair of shoulder-mounted auto-targeting mass drivers.
“Press your thumb against the bio-scanner and it will release the gel pressure enough for you to remove one of the armaments,” he explained.
“Shit,” Cass grinned at the weapons rack, “I didn’t think Origin would shell out for this kind of hardware. Is this a standard loadout for you guys?” Seemingly oblivious to the rest of the shuttle’s interior, she remained in front of the armory to inspect each firearm with great interest.
“I’m not sure,” he shrugged as he sat down at the helm and awakened the auto-pilot, “but hopefully most won’t be necessary. Our mission is to answer questions, not paint the walls with the shadows of those who once were. Ideally, we’ll be able to limit our actions to crowd control and suppression.”
Cass peered behind herself: “You’ve seen my shoulder - I don’t fire the first round. But in my experience it’s better to be over prepared than not. I would hate to bring a knife to a gunfight.” Finally letting go of the armory, she stomped to his side. Her legs really did not lend themselves to subtlety of any kind.
Mavriq shrugged, apathetic to the matter. After all, there were no armies confronting them. Just some disorganized cultists. The bigger threats, he felt, were the scavengers; opportunistic and often lawless bad actors who wouldn’t think twice before stripping down and parting out another group’s operation. On that particular front, the giant Origin emblem emblazoned on the shuttle’s hull was an effective deterrent. Presently, the docking seal detached and they drifted a safe distance away from MOS, at which point the shuttle androgynously intoned, “Please secure yourself for transit to Derelict’s primary exploitation shaft, estimated travel time 11 minutes.”
Fortunately, the trip down was uneventful. He didn’t even bother looking out the viewport to behold the panoply of drones and ships zooming to and fro like fireflies in the night. It was, of course, an act. He was super excited, but suppressed it with an intense focus on his mission updates. Feurtes’ report, for instance, was of particular interest to him, but at the end he was merely glad his team member was whole and alive.
When they docked and exited the shuttle, Feurtes saluted. The MRS drones idled nearby, one already in the driver seat of the buggy. He could barely hear himself think, what with all the ambient noise that managed to penetrate even through the protective layers of his spacesuit. Quite unsettling, actually. He never was a fan of industrial blare. Feurtes’ mouth moved, but Mav wasn’t sure what was uttered. To compensate, he amped up the audio intake and programmed his earbuds to even more aggressive noise cancellation, then attempted:
“I read your report, Officer Feurtes. It seems all, more or less, went well given the circumstances we are operating under. I expect you are eager to get back to more familiar territory?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. Not much rest to be gotten down here. Permission to board the shuttle and return to MOS?” replied Feurtes.
Mav nodded, a moment passed, then he remembered to utter the magic phrase, “Permission granted.”
Feurtes boarded the shuttle and in what seemed a mere moment later it lifted off. The kind of haste usually reserved for someone on the run for his life or looking to get his dick wet. For Feurtes’ sake, he genuinely hoped it was the latter.
“Well, Cass,” Mav gestured toward the buggy, “ready to roll?”
“Hmpf,” she scoffed, taking her eyes off the ruined majesty of the exploitation shaft’s thorned walls. “Are you?”
Her right hand firmly placed upon a high-caliber gauss rifle which was fastened to her suit with a band, she almost prowled towards the buggy. No longer carelessly swaggering where she went, the moment Cass had left the shuttle her senses perked up, her neck hairs stood on edge. Her iron legs carried her with a silent grace that would have been difficult to imagine on the MOS. She swung herself into a rear seat of the buggy in a single motion, eyes sharp on the perimeter. If something moved, she wanted to see it.
There you go.
If it helps with constructing your post, Bart, it is likely that Adelicia would voice her preference for not being carried in response to Victor.
It's, uh, right on time? Sorry, I ended up postponing it a lot during last week, and weekend was a no-go. But here we are. @_@
“Pray, forgive me,” Adelicia pleaded sheepishly, withdrawing her outstretched hand back to her chest. She nervously averted her gaze from either hunter and stiffened up. “I did not mean to imply- I meant simply-“
Struggling for words to express herself, she sighed before admitting with a tone of lament: “I- I can’t take this.”
She felt the blood rushing to her rosy cheeks and awkwardly pulled her hood over her head again. How childish she acted again – truly a disgrace to herself and the church. Dignity was one of the chief qualities of her office and here she was, once again, demonstrating all the grace of a little child instead of the elegant resolve a grown woman her age ought to have. Surely the eyes of the hunters were at her now, regarding her with loathing or, at the very least, pity. Perhaps they were inwardly laughing at her, even, just how the orphans had laughed at her in a distant-feeling past.
Feeling her eyes well up again, she hastily wiped the moisture from them and hoped that nobody noticed when she lifted her gaze once more. Much to her relief, Raine and Victor had both stopped paying attention to her, the one retrieving his weapon, the other moving away from her. Legs feeling like lead, she stiffly began to follow the imposing huntsman, still relying heavily on her staff for support. What a blessing, she thought, to have such a thing.
In her efforts to catch up with the hunters, with Raine urging haste and reminding them that other beasts may be attracted to the recent sounds of battle, Adelicia remained nonetheless careful to avoid contact with any and all puddles of blood smeared across the cobbled road in broad strokes like the deranged art of a mad painter. As she did so, eyes focused on the crimson pools that began to dry on the stones, or pooled in the gaps between them, she wondered what it might taste like – the blood of beasts. As soon as the thought entered her mind, she felt the almost instinctual need to recoil, as if kissed by the lash of an unseen tormentor. Forbidden, as many things were. The blood was foul, tainted with rage and corruption. So her church had taught her. But was it truly? Was it really the corrupting agent that clerics were making it out to be? What if it tasted of remorse or desperation? What if it tasted of fear? She had certainly savored that note in her own blood once, when curiosity got the better of her. Her cravings for blood were rarer than most, but she was adamant in her belief that no two doses had ever tasted quite the same.
Suddenly reminded of the situation she was in, and realizing she had stopped moving to stare at a particularly vile splash of blood, she hurriedly resumed following the pair of hunters, gasping a brief apology as she went.
Struggling for words to express herself, she sighed before admitting with a tone of lament: “I- I can’t take this.”
She felt the blood rushing to her rosy cheeks and awkwardly pulled her hood over her head again. How childish she acted again – truly a disgrace to herself and the church. Dignity was one of the chief qualities of her office and here she was, once again, demonstrating all the grace of a little child instead of the elegant resolve a grown woman her age ought to have. Surely the eyes of the hunters were at her now, regarding her with loathing or, at the very least, pity. Perhaps they were inwardly laughing at her, even, just how the orphans had laughed at her in a distant-feeling past.
Feeling her eyes well up again, she hastily wiped the moisture from them and hoped that nobody noticed when she lifted her gaze once more. Much to her relief, Raine and Victor had both stopped paying attention to her, the one retrieving his weapon, the other moving away from her. Legs feeling like lead, she stiffly began to follow the imposing huntsman, still relying heavily on her staff for support. What a blessing, she thought, to have such a thing.
In her efforts to catch up with the hunters, with Raine urging haste and reminding them that other beasts may be attracted to the recent sounds of battle, Adelicia remained nonetheless careful to avoid contact with any and all puddles of blood smeared across the cobbled road in broad strokes like the deranged art of a mad painter. As she did so, eyes focused on the crimson pools that began to dry on the stones, or pooled in the gaps between them, she wondered what it might taste like – the blood of beasts. As soon as the thought entered her mind, she felt the almost instinctual need to recoil, as if kissed by the lash of an unseen tormentor. Forbidden, as many things were. The blood was foul, tainted with rage and corruption. So her church had taught her. But was it truly? Was it really the corrupting agent that clerics were making it out to be? What if it tasted of remorse or desperation? What if it tasted of fear? She had certainly savored that note in her own blood once, when curiosity got the better of her. Her cravings for blood were rarer than most, but she was adamant in her belief that no two doses had ever tasted quite the same.
Suddenly reminded of the situation she was in, and realizing she had stopped moving to stare at a particularly vile splash of blood, she hurriedly resumed following the pair of hunters, gasping a brief apology as she went.
About now. :P
How naïve of her to feel safe, now that the beast was gone. Stricken with hideous laughter, Victor dropped his weapon on the ground and wandered, delirious, across the street. Although he was relatively far from the elevator, Adelicia flinched when he punched the lamp post and could not help imagining what it would feel like if that had been her body in stead of the steel pole. She did not like the way he turned around to look at her then and a cold shiver, whether from fright or disgust – or both – washed over her spine as she averted her gaze from his suddenly retching form.
Adelicia picked up her staff from the ground where it lay at her feet and used it as aid in standing up again, slowly raising herself from the little pile of misery she had been moments before. She had not been involved in the fighting, yet she felt exhaustion weigh more heavily upon her shoulders than on any of the hunters, it seemed. She leaned entirely on her censer staff, head resting against the iron shaft, when Raine approached her, arms in hand. His demeanor did not appear threatening, but appearances were deceiving in Yharnam. Maybe it wasn’t the overtly mad Victor that would be her death, but the quiet and brooding Raine Provostus. To be killed by a fellow member of the church, one of her assigned guardians no less – for shame.
“Please don’t kill me,” she mumbled when he arrived, raising her palm in a gesture to halt him. “I yield my blood willingly, if you give me mercy.” All the while, her innocent blue eyes remained focused not on his face, but on the blood-drenched weapon in his hands. She could not explain why looking at something so abhorrent fascinated – or at least, compelled – her so.
Adelicia picked up her staff from the ground where it lay at her feet and used it as aid in standing up again, slowly raising herself from the little pile of misery she had been moments before. She had not been involved in the fighting, yet she felt exhaustion weigh more heavily upon her shoulders than on any of the hunters, it seemed. She leaned entirely on her censer staff, head resting against the iron shaft, when Raine approached her, arms in hand. His demeanor did not appear threatening, but appearances were deceiving in Yharnam. Maybe it wasn’t the overtly mad Victor that would be her death, but the quiet and brooding Raine Provostus. To be killed by a fellow member of the church, one of her assigned guardians no less – for shame.
“Please don’t kill me,” she mumbled when he arrived, raising her palm in a gesture to halt him. “I yield my blood willingly, if you give me mercy.” All the while, her innocent blue eyes remained focused not on his face, but on the blood-drenched weapon in his hands. She could not explain why looking at something so abhorrent fascinated – or at least, compelled – her so.
Just to be proactive, am I good letting Bart get a chance to post or should I go ahead? I want to avoid a deadlock, just in case :P
Silence washed over the field of battle like a fog bank – sudden and unnerving. Whilst it should have calmed her, the uncertainty only increased Adelicia’s anxiety. Too terrified to look, too terrified at the prospect of raising her head and staring into those bright, milky eyes. She would rather die in ignorance of the thing that would take her. To see it and shed the last remains of her dignity before her inevitable demise – it was too much. Better to remain unknowing and fill her head with thoughts of green meadows, gentle sunlight, the scented summer breeze and –
Adelicia startled with a loud yelp as she instinctively withdrew from a sudden, unexpected sound from within the elevator cage. She stared at the innocuous hat being torn to shreds by invisible hands before her, thoughts unusually blank. All she could think of was that she did not want to die – and that she was not dead yet. The hat was already reduced to mere tatters before it dawned on her that she was not staring down the demon that haunted her childhood. The lump in her throat uncoiled, her muscles loosed up and she felt the distinct urge to cry again; out of relief, at least. Even so, she decided to show some decorum now that the hunters would no doubt return to check up on her, and swallowed her tears.
An embarrassing amount of time later, she wondered what it was that had her startled so. There had been some noise, abrupt and incredibly loud to her nerve-wracked brain. Like cloth being torn. And what was she even looking at? Just a filthy corner with some uncleaned scum in it. Hardly interesting, or so one would think, but she had been looking at it for entire seconds. Retracing these last moments, which felt to her now like a series of minutes, she remembered seeing an old, crumpled hat being torn apart by thin air. The absurdity! Was she losing her mind?
Pondering this, she gazed out of the elevator onto the dusk-lit street beyond with a pale face and blank stare. No sign of the beast remained and only the two hunters stood, triumphant over their prey. No doubt they felt invigorated by their victory; as for Adelicia, she felt no ounce of happiness.
Adelicia startled with a loud yelp as she instinctively withdrew from a sudden, unexpected sound from within the elevator cage. She stared at the innocuous hat being torn to shreds by invisible hands before her, thoughts unusually blank. All she could think of was that she did not want to die – and that she was not dead yet. The hat was already reduced to mere tatters before it dawned on her that she was not staring down the demon that haunted her childhood. The lump in her throat uncoiled, her muscles loosed up and she felt the distinct urge to cry again; out of relief, at least. Even so, she decided to show some decorum now that the hunters would no doubt return to check up on her, and swallowed her tears.
An embarrassing amount of time later, she wondered what it was that had her startled so. There had been some noise, abrupt and incredibly loud to her nerve-wracked brain. Like cloth being torn. And what was she even looking at? Just a filthy corner with some uncleaned scum in it. Hardly interesting, or so one would think, but she had been looking at it for entire seconds. Retracing these last moments, which felt to her now like a series of minutes, she remembered seeing an old, crumpled hat being torn apart by thin air. The absurdity! Was she losing her mind?
Pondering this, she gazed out of the elevator onto the dusk-lit street beyond with a pale face and blank stare. No sign of the beast remained and only the two hunters stood, triumphant over their prey. No doubt they felt invigorated by their victory; as for Adelicia, she felt no ounce of happiness.
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