Atrophy

Amongst the Lonesome- A return to Santa Somabra [Fantasy Noir]

Good job. I'm working on a solo post o get Val ready for the super ultra great secret plan.

Chase the Night

@Atrophy Just a clarification point. With Blank's ability, will he still remain visible to those with IR and X-Ray vision?

@NuttsnBolts

That's a good question. I was under the impression that modern day Spooks would have technology that creates an almost absolute camouflage around them that prevents them from being seen, but Blank isn't not a modern day Spook. I don't feel like a perfect camo would really make sense (or really be fun; ~5 minutes is a lotta time to be invisible).

I'm going to pretend that I understand the electromagnetic spectrum and that it hasn't been nearly a decade since I last thought about it or that I am now feverishly reading Wikipedia. Perhaps it would be best to have Blank completely invisible to anything on the lower energy side of the spectrum, so he would not be detectable by the naked eye, infrared, radio waves, but he would be detectable by types of vision that use UV, X-Rays, or Gamma Rays. In other words, every day Enforcers, the average civilian, and some Divers would not see him since he's invisible to more typically used alternative vision (radar, thermal) while more cybered up Divers and Spooks would be able to see him by using their less common alternative vision (X-Ray, UV).

But really, I rather do what works best for the group. Let's see what @Hexaflexagon has to say on the nature of cloaking.

Chase the Night

For everyone's sake, Blank drafted Gorgon to keep her away from the fragile, squishy civilians. Sorry, @Traitor. We'll have to let ol' Gorgy go on a blending spree some other time.

_{But we will be having civvie smoothies sooner or later.}

Chase the Night

Blank cracked open his drink and put the rim to his lips. He gave an exaggerated sigh of satisfaction as he wiped his lips clean with the back of his glove. He actually didn’t really care for light beer. He generally preferred his drinks to be a lot darker, a lot stiffer, or a combination of the two. He lazily eyed the others from underneath his hat, casually lifting the can to his mouth. He didn’t really feel personally hurt by those who had set down his drink, although it would refrain from him mockingly acting insulted later on. Perhaps they were teetotalers. Blank could see someone boasting about how their body was a temple and alcohol was a poison, all the while splicing themselves with further and further unstable augments.

Still, sharing a drink was a sign of camaraderie; the least they could do was be like him and pretend to drink the pisswater. Pretending was Blank’s new pastime. From his voice to the smile on his face, nodding along as Gorgon pseudo-promised to protect Gaze, everything was just like his augmentations—artificial and barely more than skin deep. Toasting to their health and calling the ragtag group of C-Freaks friends? Yeah, to call it a little superficial would have been an understatement. It’s not that he didn’t like them, he did (well, most of them). He just wouldn’t be going to their funeral unless they offered a baller buffet and promised to speed through the rosary.

He pondered Gaze’s point: some of them wouldn’t come back alive. It was good to see that he wasn’t the only one who noticed that perhaps Kybuashi actually knew of some likely trouble instead of just being an overprotective investor. Scratch that, some of us wouldn’t come back alive, thought Blank, not putting his chances of survival above the others. He probably had more experience than most of the team, but experience meant jackshit when somebody could install an augment that allowed them to shoot a coin out of the air from over a mile away while running. He knew more than anyone that the only reason he made it so long was because of a hot streak when it came to rolling dice, and they were slowly being loaded against him.

Although he wasn’t above cheating if his luck did run out.

“Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll be fine,” said Blank after Phantasm offered a sound reason as to why there were so many of them. He didn’t know much about the woman, but he could appreciate someone who put in the effort to remain unknown. It was a good quality in a Diver. He glanced over at the quiet man, Jag, as he shifted back and forth like he was fiending hard for some Neurotop. There was a chime.

“Time to go,” said Jag.

““I’m sure our biggest threat will be boredom. Should’ve brought cards,” said Blank, discretely placing his full beer into a trash can. Former corporate killer or not, he didn’t like littering. Perhaps his nanny did raise him right; more likely it was a force of habit from covering his tracks while on a job that had just become second nature.

Following the others into the train, Blank made a conscious decision not to sit next to Crash. It wasn’t that the man didn’t appreciate the Diver. Sure, they had completely different styles from what Blank could find out, but whatever got the job done, right? The reason was a much simpler one. If he was going to be on a train for over half a day then he wanted to have a window seat, and taking the one next to the big guy meant he was at best giving up his armrest and at worst having a metallic elbow dig into his gut for the entire trip. Sliding his satchel carefully below a seat in the front of the railcar, he casually kicked his foot up on the seat across from himself and leaned against the window as the maglev kicked on and the city turned into a blur.

After meeting the Divers early, Blank had dug through whatever resources he had to find out information on them. It was an old habit, back from the days when he took large jobs that split the pay between the remaining Divers as opposed to individually paying each an agreed upon sum. It was a recipe for disaster, and more than once had Blank found himself at the end of a “friend’s” gun for his share of the pay. Fortunately, the practice had fallen out of favor a few years back, and Blank had double checked with Kybuashi Enterprises just in case—their payments were freezed until the mission was complete, and any assets owed to deceased Divers would instead be returned to the Corp.

Still, finding out about his comrades had proven to be a daunting task (he once thought about creating a company that licensed and catalogued Divers, before realizing that it would exclusively be used by Corps), but scanning some of their hardware awarded with at least some basic knowledge about what they could bring to the table. He tried his hand at quickly categorizing the group—loud or quiet, tactical or instinctive, lethal or nonlethal—and tried to think of who he would mesh the best with if, no, when things derailed. He pulled himself out of his thoughts as Crash walked past him and stepped into the room with the box. I’m sure it’s not going anywhere, he thought as he leaned out of his seat and looked into the room. Yup, same old box.

“You think they’ll show us what’s in the box when we’re done?” asked Blank to his neighbor across the aisle. “I bet it’s going to actually be some p—shit!”

Blank jerked his head out of the way of getting smashed to bits by Crash, appropriately enough, crashing through the door. He didn’t need to hear the big guy to know what was going on; the Oracle Eye had just picked up the loud engines followed by a good number of signs of life. Footsteps overhead confirmed it, and explosions from the front and rear confirmed that they weren’t just some cybered out hobos hopping on a train to avoid buying a ticket.

Not exactly the way I would start the assault, but I gotta give them some credit, thought Blank.

“Not to be that guy, but I told you it’s bad luck not to share a drink,” said Blank loudly, smiling. Part of him was glad that things had so quickly gone awry; easy jobs were nice, but they just lacked that special something. He pulled his submachine gun and his baton from his satchel, leaving behind some of his heavier ordnance. Blank did not know what an EMP would do to a maglev train, but he didn’t want to risk sending them off course at several hundred miles per hour.

There was screaming from the car behind them, loud and shrill. His smile faded as Crash bolted towards the car full of civvies. He didn’t like the idea of collateral damage any more than the next man, but Blank had been hired on by Kybuashi Enterprises to protect a box—not publicly play bodyguard to help guard their PR. The feeling of doing a good deed did not put a roof over his head, buy him dinner, or provide him with intel and gadgets; if the package got grabbed when he was off playing hero then he was screwed.

Still, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t assist Crash, and they would have to take out all of the interlopers anyway. Blank turned his comms on, knowing from experience that plenty of runs had gone sideways because a lack of coordination between unfamiliar Divers. Sure, some knew how to move around other Divers like a talented dancer can avoid getting their toes stepped on by a nervous partner, but some sure as hell didn’t. Blank wasn’t going to simply hope that everyone knew what they were doing. He would have to hope, however, that none of his new friends had an ego; or if they did, at least knew when and where to flex it.

“The bastards are split into two groups; we should do the same and push back before they completely pincer us in here. Alpha can push back the pricks in the passenger car, Bravo can guard the box,” he said calmly over the comms, quickly running the numbers. There were eight of them, so two teams of four.

“I need three people to go with Crash. Preferably people who are good shots; I don’t want to have to throw any more bodies overboard than we need to. Gorgon, you and two others come with me. Call out your team over comms and keep this channel open. We don’t want a clusterfuck,” he said.

He would normally have picked Crash serve as his bullet sponge just on size alone, but the man had already incidentally volunteered himself to lead team Alpha. Gorgon would serve as a fine, if not even a better, alternative. His radar informed him that none of their attackers had entered the car holding their package yet. Good, that gave them time to set up an ambush. Tossing a piece of gum in his mouth, Blank gripped his Overloader as his mouth filled with the taste of cinnamon. He wrinkled his nose at the gross taste. It was a necessary evil as the chip in his mind vanished him from the sights of his allies. He had until the taste disappeared to be hidden; pushing anything beyond that was a risk he wasn’t willing to take.

“Stunning the first guy who comes through. We’ll want to know if they have anything else planned for us later,” said Blank over comms as he sidled up to the door at the far end of the almost empty cargo car. “Don’t shoot until he’s out of the way, and try not to get any bullet holes in their damn box.” Blips on his radar from the next cargo car moved closer to them. "Okay, here they come."

The Origin: A War Resumed (Arc One; Completed)

@The Darklight ProjectOh, Vesta loves the arena. Yeah, no hard feelings there whatsoever. Still, she'd probably force Cyril to let her help. And yeah, as for Ennis, eh, he'll cheer from the sidelines and...maybe help people cheat...

Good thing I've been playing plenty of the new Street Fighter to get ready for some combat!

The Origin: A War Resumed (Arc One; Completed)

Ennis

It had been a rough morning for the Ambassador. It had taken more than a few knocks to stir the man out of his restless sleep, and even then his body was too stiff to move. He never did find that bathhouse; most of his evening had been spent trying to keep an eye out for any trouble within the group. Vesta had, luckily, backed down from challenging that paladin (after Ennis had discretely cast a spell on her that made her words sound like mush). Realizing almost instantly what had happened, his “bodyguard” had stormed off—the reaction Ennis had hoped for but hadn’t been a hundred percent sure he would get. Fortune smiled on him, thankfully. He didn’t see her for the rest of the night; likely, she was off venting her frustrations on some poor bottle of liquor.

Eventually he did clamber out of bed and into his travelling clothes, although urges from the Sentinels that he hurries up prevented him from taking his usual time to groom himself. Hair sticking every-which-way and his eyes deeply set within two dark sockets, Ennis looked more as if he had walked out of a war zone than had spent a day riding at a steady pace. Vesta was already ready with his horse by the time he had joined the others, although the woman said no word to him as she handed him the reins. In fact, she had said no word to anyone since the paladin had chastised her and Ennis had temporarily snipped her venomous tongue. Even as they rode the woman was silent, occasionally separating from the group to either scout ahead or to avoid the others. Ennis knew that is was probably both. The woman was vigilant, but she was also beyond stubborn.

Vesta

And, more importantly, she was hiding her drinking. Vesta had started that morning and had no intention on stopping until they either made camp or she fell off of her horse as drunk as a lord. She didn’t even know why she was hiding it. She cared little if they found out about her vice, let alone if they left her to freeze on the Guratan wastes; she would still follow Cyril as he, like that bastard paladin said, led children into battle. It was her duty to protect Olain’s children, even if they were arrogant, self-righteous idiots who surrounded themselves with sycophants, serpents, and strangers—not to mention cowardly drunks.

She was riding on their flank right now, her bow drawn as if she was keeping her eyes out for any wandering miscreants. Not that it mattered, for Vesta knew that if they stumbled upon a bandit, rogue, or pirate that Cyril would wave his hands around, declare an imperial decree, and draft the cutthroat into his merry band of riffraff. The man’s unrelenting idealism was almost impressive. Perhaps it was the alcohol, but she could almost see Cyril going up to Gartian, shaking his hand, and asking him to join their cause to stop his own damn army. She spat at the thought. Her eyes flashed back towards the group; they were stopping for some reason.

She spurred her horse and rejoined the others as they crowded around the crumpled figure. A corpse; so what? Through the haze of her vision, however, she could see the dead body’s chest rise and fall. She sighed. It was a hindrance, but even the reformed bandit wasn’t low enough to leave an injured man out in the field. In her mind, it was the same as being the one who had inflicted the wound in the first place. Slowly dismounting from her her horse, she hovered behind Lora as the woman revealed his shoulder injury. Vesta had seen her fair share of wounds in her day, and could immediately determine what she was looking at. She shook her head disparagingly. What idiot pulls out an arrow without having someone around to help heal the wound?

“Poor lad,” said Ennis.

“He’s a dumbass,” said Vesta, steadying herself with both hands on her makeshift cane. Lora had said that the wound was old. That meant he either felt no need to get it patched up or felt like he could trust no one to patch it up. Vesta knew from experience that even most magic couldn’t heal a wound that had been given too much time to improperly heal. It was the very reason why she no longer put money on bar bets that required her to race somebody. She couldn’t help but empathize with the wounded man; part of her even hoped they were not too late for the fellow, idiot or not.

Another part of her was on high alert.

“We should do something,” said Ennis, ignoring Vesta’s correction and offering no solutions on to what something would actually be.

Yeah, I get it.

“Lora, unless you know any healing magic then get out of the way,” she said, stepping a few more feet away from the man herself. Her voice was stern and steady, but wasn’t necessarily harsh. She tucked her sheath into her belt and drew her bow. “A common tactic among bandits is to use a wounded individual as bait to force travelers to lower their guard. Cyril, command your men to set up a perimeter around the area just in case.” She glared at Diane. “You, Lady Laues: despite what Damon says cripples are not completely dependent on Divines or babysitters. More importantly, Ayano is not a child; you can stop doting on her for a minute. Surely, that staff is not just for show. Heal this man; I’ll cover you if he turns out to just be a good actor.”

“Now,” she said firmly as she notched an arrow.

Amongst the Lonesome- A return to Santa Somabra [Fantasy Noir]

<Snipped quote by Atrophy>

Seconded, but that's maybe not surprising coming from the dude RPing a wendigo.

@Flagg

Well, it's only not surprising because Kurtz happens to be a classy man of wealth and taste.

Medium steak. F'ing hell.

Amongst the Lonesome- A return to Santa Somabra [Fantasy Noir]

<Snipped quote by Kingfisher>

Jesus Fucking Christ, man...
If Cain had known that steaks were this dangerous, he would have ordered the lamb chop instead.

@JulienJaden

Duder already ordered a medium steak. Might as well have eaten from the garbage...

Chase the Night

@HexaflexagonHow I imagine it'll go down:

The Origin: A War Resumed (Arc One; Completed)

I spent the weekend painting ceilings and then recovering from painting ceilings by sleeping for almost half of a day. It was rad!

I should start working on something pretty soon. I guess Vesta does have to roll out the welcoming wagon.