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RP [Roc] Mission 2- Samdog, New Tricks.

Kai

Retired Staff
Nepleslia, Roger Wilco city.

In some shady back alley, in some shady little bar. There sat a shady little figure, acting somewhat shady. They were sitting in the corner of a bar in a booth seat with an empty cup on the table. Blonde, scruffy haired, and poorly clothed on first glance, but looking closer, something didn't quite seem right. His hands were gloved and his neck and chest visible from under his shirt and vest were in a matte, slate grey skintight suit of some sort.

Another figure made its way to the booth, seating herself casually as if she had known its current occupant for years. A scantily clad waitress came up, and took her order before disappearing again to fill it, leaving the pair alone. Danny wobbled a little when the waitress came by, but he focused his attention on the woman in front of him. He didn't say the first word, and waited for her to speak first. That's why he was here.

He didn't have to wait very long before the other spoke. "I hear you're good at getting into places" she began, as the waitress stopped by again, dropping the woman's drink on the table gingerly, only a few drops spilling from it. The woman took a sip before continuing. "I need to get into a place that most people don't know exists." she tipped her drink at Danny. "Can you help me do that?"

He just nodded at her, still looking into her eyes and breathing quietly. "Yes," he said, voice mousy and quiet. Some things never changed.

"Good." The woman answered simply, taking another sip and seeming to contemplate it. "I can provide transport, and supplies." Her body language was sedate, casual. As if she were simply meeting an old friend. "Do you, ah, need anything else?"

He looked down by his side and produced a small backpack that looked as though it'd fit on the small of your back, secured by belt. Sticking out of one of the pockets was a radio antenna, and he pulled out an electric baton, and a folding stun gun. "Cartridges," he replied casually. "I... don't feel good about killing." He was not trained or prepared to take a life yet.

The woman nodded. "Easy enough," and dropped some change on the table to pay for her drink. "Meet me at the Roger Wilco spaceport in three hours. Black shuttle, Registered as the Roc." She slid out of the booth, and began to walk away, but paused. "I've left a KS card under your cup. It's half. You'll get the rest when we get back."

Danny took the card and put it in his top pocket quietly and nodded as the woman slipped away.

-

Three hours later, he was sitting on top of the Roc cross legged and waiting quietly. He had nothing else to do with himself since he was placed here on Wilco City by Franz earlier. He looked over to the city skyline and recognized some of it. Wasn't that where he first met Franz, between those six buildings? Perhaps. He'd have to see for himself, but he didn't have time.

He was sitting on an appointment. Much to his surprise, the appointment arrived not from without the shuttle, but rather within. The shuttle made a sudden pneumatic hiss, and the rear hatch opened, without much fuss or occasion beyond the hiss. The woman from earlier strolled out, wearing a pair of old jeans and a leather bomber jacket that had several bullet holes in it.

He started creeping across the roof of the shuttle and observed her, peering over the edge before slipping over it and landing behind her silently. He'd taped and secured the loose elements of his clothing and equipment down to reduce noise made when moving. He leaned against the side of the entrance and tapped the wall twice, looking as though he'd been waiting a while.

The woman turned a few moments after the noise, and grinned. "Not bad. You still show up on visuals, but everything else, well, the other sensor readings match your voice." She proffered a hand and finally introduced herself. "The Name's Ellen. Ellen Katsuragi. You're Danny, obviously, though I didn't bother searching for your particulars."

He looked down at the offered hand and gave it a shake. Ellen would feel the material on Danny's hands being something similar to ... spandex, or latex; something you'd expect to see in a dungeon. It was tight, but it seemed to have been woven in such a way to be comfortable and flexible while offering radar resistance. Where did he get such a suit? He wouldn't have been able to afford it on Origin's payroll unless he moved up the ranks and got a disposable income.

After the shake, Ellen walked into the shuttle once more, waving Danny onward. "We'll leave immediately, if you've nothing else to take care of before we go. Once we're safely underway, I'll let you know where we're going."

He sat down on the nearest available space and began waiting. "I've got what I need." He then unbuttoned his vest, revealing the cream white shirt underneath, and then started unbuttoning his shirt - his chest covered in that suit beneath his clothing and he folded it and put it next to him. He removed the trousers and his legs were more of the same. Now he was waiting, and he was invisible to radar. Visually, there was still a man sitting down and waiting, wearing practically nothing with his outer layer of clothing sitting in a neat pile beside him. "So what are we going to pick up?"

Ellen began the launch procedure, ignoring the man as he undressed in the navigator's seat. soon, the shuttle was moving, vibrating ever so slightly as the gravitational systems adjusted themselves to keep the movement of the shuttle from disturbing the passengers as it went. "Well," she began, as the sky around them grew darker and darker and the stars became brighter and brighter. "It's not so much as what, but who. Unfortunately, I won't be able to tell you who until we collect them. And no, it isn't someone who owes me money or anything like that; it's a personal matter."

Danny's fingers wrapped around his chin and he thought for a moment. "Was it a kidnapping?" he guessed aloud as he watched the stars come into view outside the window.

"Not Exactly." was the only answer Danny would get on that subject. "But now we're on our way, I can let you know, we're headed to the Svodog system. Planet Samdog. It's... Less than hospitable, and I've come across the location of an unregistered establishment beneath the surface."

Danny leaned into the navigation console and tried to access information about this planet. He also appeared to be fiddling with an earpiece of some sort that was running up the left side of his head from underneath the suit. According to the navigation AI, it was an inhospitable place full of magnetic storms - perfect place to hide something.

"Franz? I'm going to drop off the radar," he spoke quietly, as if to himself. "I'll see you when I do."

Ellen looked at the man as he made his transmission, but since it was very short and didn't give any real information, she didn't say anything. "We're going in slow and cold, so it will take us a little while. Make yourself comfortable and get some rest, and I'll let you know."

"Is there a bed somewhere I could use? I'd like to lie down."

She pointed a thumb back into the cargo bay. "Bunks in the walls. they fold down. Take the bottom one, top one's mine."

He swiveled the navigator's seat around and walked towards the wall bunks. He pulled them out and laid down on the bottom one. He didn't put a blanket or cover over himself, but just lied down, face up with his eyes closed. He was focusing on his breathing. In, out, in, out, in, out. It was the first thing Franz taught him to manage his nerves.

From the cockpit, he could hear Ellen speaking to the ship's computer, and then the sounds of controls being manipulated. Soon, another gentle hum joined the normal sounds of the ship as the FTL drive began to initiate itself, and before he could bat an eye, the Roc blasted off on its way through hyperspace toward Samdog.
 
"Franz?" Danny breathed. It was only a couple of minutes before Samdog was near. He was nervous. Radio silence pervaded his ear as he anticipated a response from his handler, and the only father figure he'd known.

His toes curled. He couldn't hear anything. There was nothing. Perhaps he was by himself - with that woman - she barely looked older than a teenager and yet she was leading a mission into somewhere he'd never heard of. "Are you there?"

That Teenager sat intent at the controls, watching as readouts of their trip through hyperspace flashed by on the HUD, when suddenly the ship gave a slight shudder, and the stretched envelope of star-like phenomena that marked hyperspace disappeared, and the world outside the cockpit reverted to the familiar inky blackness, pinpricked with minuscule dots of light. With a couple of exceptions. Dead ahead, was the bright, flaming ball of the Svodog system's sun, and just ahead of them was a tiny bit of shade, almost obscured against the sun that it orbited, was the planet Samdog.

She arose, and looked at the lump that was Danny sitting on the bed. "Get up" she urged him, pulling on a panel in the ceiling, which revealed a slate-grey power armor, a basic industrial Impulse armor. "You'll need this to survive the surface, but not once we get inside" she indicated, before moving to another pull down panel, revealing a smaller, sleeker, black powered armor, which appeared to be a heavily modified Impulse, as well.

He stood up from the bed. He didn't need a suit to wear prior to getting into the armor - what he was wearing did the job fine. He took the backpack off of the small of his back and tied it to the waist of the armor before stepping inside. Ellen would notice that he seemed a little lost, but appeared to be able to use the powered armor just fine. It closed up around him and the HUD lit up.

Ellen relieved herself of her jacket and her jeans, revealing a black bodysuit underneath. Around her waist, was revealed a belt that carried several Zen arms Covert Ops pistols, and one much larger ODM Raygun pistol. This belt was stuffed in a bag that appeared to already be full of something relatively soft, which was added to the black armor's waist before the young woman boarded it. As it closed and sealed itself around Ellen, its faceplate lit up, revealing a pair of glowing blue inverted triangles connected by a thin blue line, shining from behind her visor.

By the time the pair had finished suiting up, Samdog could be seen from the cockpit as a much larger entity than it had before. Now, they could see its surface, roiling with clouds and lighting up with electrical storms. The weather was obviously incredibly unstable, and that made it clear why the armors were needed. "Are you ready?" Ellen asked Danny as she headed back into the cockpit, to help monitor the landing operations.

"Bye Franz," he said, sighing beneath his suit, fogging the inside visor partially before it faded away. His suit slumped visibly before he righted himself and looked at Ellen. "Yeah." He replied morosely before sitting back down on the bed. The line was still open but it faded into fizzles, static and white noise as the volatile atmosphere interfered with communications.

The shuttle shook slightly as it hit the atmosphere, but the internal gravity system kept the occupants from feeling the worst of the jolt, and then the ship began to buck and shimmy as it ran through it, though with the gravity manipulation and the sudden loss of any visual cues aside from the roiling storms made it hard to tell. All at once the majority of the sensors went haywire, and communications went out completely, but amazingly, many of the secondary, analog sensors kept as backup showed their mettle, and did their job of allowing the black shuttle to 'see' where it was going in relation to the planet itself.

After several tense minutes, the shuttle punched through the bottom of the cloud layer, and through the cockpit could be seen the full brunt of the electrical storms raging on the surface- Lightning strikes like nothing every seen on Nepleslia were omnipresent, and the sky was dark and stormy, the air whirling and eddying however it pleased. The view outside was partially obscured by massive quantities of some sort of rain, though whether or not it was actually water was impossible to determine for the moment.

Below, the land was bleak and obviously unforgiving, with not a single sign of life present- no flora or fauna, not even mosses and molds. Perhaps bacteriological life existed on this planet, but it wasn't especially likely. Somewhere, amongst all the earthy gray and rocky terrain, there was some sort of secret base, and they had to find it.

"Danny, could I have your assistance?" Ellen asked, waving him into the cockpit. "I need you to try and help me spot something out of place on the surface. I can't pinpoint our exact location, but we are in the correct area to find it."

He stepped ahead and looked out onto the planet's surface from his armor and he started looking at it. He was wondering if the armor had some sort of vision magnification system that'd allow him to look closer. Parts of the armor's HUD were freaking out as the magnetic storms and atmosphere made the display flicker, scramble and shake in random, momentary intervals. "Hum. Everything looks kinda samey - maybe look for hard edges or something... uhm..." His eyes were looking for something that didn't fit the chaotic terrain, something square-like.

"More than likely, we're looking for something that's trying to be both hidden and reinforced, probably like an old-school Munitions Bunker or something." Ellen suggested, as she began to fly lower, heading toward a convenient looking hill, and beginning to make a pass around it, seeing if there had been any sort of entrance added to it. Unfortunately, the first few passes revealed nothing, and the Roc moved on to the next possible hill, this one a bit smaller and less impressive than the last.

Sure enough, there was a reinforced entryway on this hill, but Ellen wasn't the first to notice it, as Danny's scanning eyes came across it just as they passed by, a dark grey wall made of native materials, with a dark grey door embedded in the middle of it.

"THERE!" he exclaimed like a child who knew the answer to a teacher's question.

The shuttle stopped in an instant, floating where it was mid-air, the occupants not feeling the sudden change of inertia, and then it began to spin, pointing itself at the bunker door, and then making its way toward a rather large boulder roughly a kilometer away, behind which it parked itself.

"Alright, this is our stop!" Ellen exclaimed cheerily, and she left the cockpit, and opening the airlock door at the side of the shuttle, the sudden influx of local weather suddenly buffeting the interior of the shuttle, causing the sheets and pillows on the bunks to bustle about, and some loose papers to be blown around.

"Ooh, interesting" the girl observed as she examined the surface of the world. "It's a mixture of rock, sand, and glass, made by lightning strikes. The weather wears away the rock, turning it into sand, which is then struck by lightning, and becomes glass. A bit freaky." she rattled off, as she began trekking toward the low hill, and the bunker in the distance.

"Why would anyone stay here?" Danny asked, attempting to block his ears under the suit. "This place is so... noisy!"

"That's exactly why they're here, because it's too much of a pain in the ass for most people to bother looking" Ellen answered. "If I hadn't already known about where to look i probably wouldn't have bothered trying" she admitted as she trudged forward, smashing natural glass sculptures and kicking up drifts of sand into the wind as she went. "And if you can't take the noise, tell the suit to muffle it" she suggested, tapping the side of her suit's own helmet as she did so.

And it did. He stepped through the glass ministructures carefully, trying not to break them. They were unlike anything he'd seen on the Nepleslias or Dawn Station. He picked up one of them and started carrying it. "I wonder if people sell these...?" he wondered as he kept walking. "They're so pretty."

Danny and Ellen's comms suddenly crackled violently as a nearby surge of electromagnetic energy interfered with the signal, and before they could react to it, a bolt of lightning struck Danny, arcing around his body as the insulated armor acted as a Faraday cage, channeling the charge around him harmlessly, but it was still a bit frightening nonetheless. Behind them they could see a second bolt arc down and hit the Roc, and ahead and all around them the electrical storm sent bolts of lightning into anything it felt like hitting.

Muffled from the interference, Ellen's voice fuzzily made its way to Danny's ears through all the white noise. "Perhaps we should hurry!" she suggested urgently, and began jogging, and then running toward the bunker, only half a kilometer away by now.

"RUN!" Danny freaked out from within his suit and started dashing ahead. Shards and structures of glass were flying into the air as he dashed towards the base like a headless chicken. He didn't know that anything harmless had happened to him, but his gait suggested that he was practically falling over himself to get out of the lightning.

"Lightning, Lightning, everywhere, and not a drop to drink!" Ellen's voice chuckled as they continued their sudden sprint toward the door of the bunker. "This is actually perfect cover, I bet they can't see us at all!' she mused, as they came up next to the wall, arriving at the door without much ceremony.

Skidding to a halt and standing close against the wall, Ellen's armor turned to Danny's, illuminated sequentially by a number of lightning flashes all around, the deafening sound waves buffeting them slightly, but doing them no harm in their power armors. "Shall we go in quiet, or loud?" she asked her hired sneak.

To an onlooker, it would look as though Danny was using the sound of the lightning storm to mask his entrance into the facility by running right through the door. However, the truth was that he was still scared, even of being outside. He had left an Impulse-wearing Danny shaped hole in the wall, something the sleek Impulse the woman was wearing could step through. Now that the communications had cleared up some, his message was abundantly clear: " ...aaaaaAAAAAAOOUGH!"

"Guess that answers that..." Ellen muttered, shaking her helmeted head slightly and stepping through the crumbled, humanoid shaped hole in the wall. She made a note of the entranceway as the outer weather made its way forcibly in, though it was thankfully much quieter in here, and there was much less interference. In one of the corners, facing the door, were the remains of a security camera, which had been blasted apart by debris from Danny's spectacular entrance into the foyer, or whatever you wanted to call this area. near the back of it was another door, behind which was an industrial elevator, leading underground.

"Let's stow the suits up here" the teal-eyed girl suggested, removing her helmet and stashing it in the elevator room, before removing her armor and securing it once more with the helmet. grabbing her gun belt out of the bag before swinging the bag over her shoulders. She looked over Danny's armor and frowned. "Maaan, that thing was brand new!" she complained, and it was then that Danny noticed that the entire front of his armor had caved in somewhat. indeed, his movements had become more sluggish, suggesting some of the servos had been damaged, as well.

He attempted to pull the helmet off of his head and with enough effort, it came off with a pop. A bewildered and bleary eyed looking Danny eyed Ellen before trying to get the rest of the suit off of him. "WHY LIGHTNING." he exclaimed, still oblivious to the fact that his suit was immune to it. He was able to get the back of the suit open and pulled himself out of it, breathing heavy and feeling a sigh of relief. When Ellen looked at him, she could see something like moisture, like sweat on his sneaking suit. Some advanced form of fluid wicking, perhaps?

Ellen shook her head, mentally tucking away some of the observed properties of the burglar's cat-suit. "The suit is electronically insulated. you're perfectly safe from electricity when inside it, unless something penetrates the innermost layer. Now, walls, however, are much more dangerous a foe. You're lucky to survive that one" she pointed at the howling hole that was the outer wall, and rolled her eyes.

"Well, are you ready to go? The elevator seems security locked, can you bypass it?" the black-haired girl asked, pointing at the console, which currently flashed the words 'ACCESS DENIED' on its display screen.

He grabbed his backpack off of the side of the armor and inspected the contents. Somehow, the bag was capable of surviving the lightning strikes too. Advanced bag. He reattached it to his suit, pulled the stun gun out, and placed the spare cartridges onto a pouch on his abdomen. The radio was also working and his communications were restored as he did a mic test in his ear. "Ready when you are."

He pulled something out of his bag. It appeared to be a digital multitool of some sort. He was no hacker, but a computer could do the infiltration for him, or at least take some of the gruntwork out of it as he started scanning the controls. It took half a minute of scanning and analysis before its attack was made suddenly. "I don't think this would've worked outside," he noted when the controls went green, 'ACCESS GRANTED' pasted on screen.

"Thanks" Ellen said, pushing the down button, as the elevator groaned to life, hydraulic pressure dropping in a controlled manner to lower the cargo platform down several meters and into the underground bunker that they were currently tasked with infiltrating. After the brief descent, the elevator clanked to a stop in front of a set of wide sliding doors. A window cut in one of the doors allowed them to note that the corridor beyond was empty, and had three doors on each side, with a seventh door at the far end, above which was another security camera.

Ellen motioned at the hallway, specifically the camera, and then looked at Danny. "Any suggestions? I bet you they know we're here, but I could do with out them watching us the whole time."

He watched if the camera moved it all from a distance, swiveling or pivoting - but there was nothing. It appeared to be static, straight down the hallway. The first thing he did was look up. Then he looked down. He was looking for a duct or vent or anything he could crawl through - alas, solid stone and concrete met his gaze above but below... There was a vent, perhaps just outside the camera's field of vision that he could see. He darted ahead, unfastened the covers and slid inside.

Seeing dust all around him in the vent, he pulled a cover from under the neckline of his suit to go over his mouth and nose so he wouldn't cough from dust.

The ventilation system was much like the hallway ahead, a central shaft running down the middle of the hallway, with three runners to either side, and a final runner leading to the back room, though on that end there seemed to also be a vertical shaft leading between floors, probably down to the main HVAC system.

He started crawling on his belly towards the first runner on his left. He only had two feet of room to crawl in above him and to either side was about three feet. It was a blessing for him even though he could deal with tighter, more constrained spaces.

Danny would notice that the gratings up ahead at the terminus of the runner not only pointed up, but down as well, affording him a view up into the room above, and down on the room below. Above seemed to be an ordinary storage room, it had boxes with various markings, some containing food, others medical supplies, and other basic needs for survival. Below him, however, appeared to be an office.

The office was incredibly messy, as if someone with no sense of tidiness worked in it. the walls had crudely made picture frames, which held what appeared to be degrees, though as far as Danny could tell, they were written on mess tray liners, judging by the grease and sauce colored marks on a couple of them. Various generic medical devices were strewn about the desk, on top of the numerous papers, which seemed to be health files, suggesting this was the Doctor's office.

"Do you see anything?" Ellen's voice whispered over the Burglar's communicator, as she waited patiently on the elevator.

"Office on floor below, looks like a doctor or someone who just likes putting stuff in rooms to look busy..." He tried to look for a way to open the cover beneath him, and pushed it downwards. It fell open on two hinges and he grabbed the edge, pulling himself out of the vent and sliding into the room. He hung onto the edge the whole time and slid his body out with uncanny contortion, and he landed next to the desk, crouching down immediately. "I'm in," he whispered back.

Danny was nearly immediately greeted with a metal tray flying flat-side first into his face, resulting in a resonating 'DONG' as the office chair suddenly morphed into what appeared to be a neko doctor, the white coat hanging on the chair covering over its shape-shifting owner quite conveniently. Danny's dazed ears were verbally assaulted both from the suddenly appearing occupant and his current employer, the former yelling "WHO ARE YOU?" and the latter yelling "What was that?"

Danny recoiled as stars filled his vision and he looked up at whatever had struck him in the head, leaving a red mark that'd be sore in the morning splattered across his forehead.

As Danny's vision began swimming back into focus, a dark-haired Neko with olive skin came into view. She seemed concerned and curious, but still held the tray threateningly over him. She was of average size for a neko, but more than a bit curvy, and her eyes were ocean blue beneath her furrowed brows.

Talking was not Danny's forte, and he was still wondering where she'd come from. The chair had gone missing too. His eyes looked about nervously - this wasn't the first time he'd been caught, but it was the first time he'd been ambushed by something so strange. "I'm Danny." he replied meekly, answering the question perhaps a little too directly as he nursed the bruise on his head.

Ellen's voice resounded in Danny's ear once more "Danny, what was that?" she asked, again, as the Neko in front of Danny slowly lowered the tray in her hand, holding it behind her back as she stood up straighter and looked down over the confused cat burglar.

The Neko moved back a Step or two, seeming taken aback by the blunt answer she received. "Well, Danny, What are you doing entering my office from the vents?"

"Because I need to find something," he replied innocently. However, the way he delivered it made it seem as though he was a mysterious professional of some sort with his own agenda when the truth couldn't be further and he didn't even know what he was looking for exactly. He touched his earpiece and replied back to Ellen with a whisper. "I'm okay."

Back in the elevator, Ellen's palm met her forehead, a frustrated gesture of annoyance. "No wonder he was so easy to contract..." she muttered to herself, before responding "Find out where they keep the higher end medical stuff," she asked, checking out the porthole on the elevator doors to make sure no one was coming down the hallway.

"What do you need to find?" the Neko asked, authoritatively, placing her hands on her hips. The food tray was oddly absent, though Danny had not heard or seen it fall to the ground. "You aren't another one of his idiot mercenaries trying to make off with something expensive, are you?"

"Uh, I'm not looking for anything expensive I can find, just one specific thing. I think it's medical related." He looked at the degrees on the wall behind her, trying not to think about where the tray had disappeared to. "Where'd you get your degrees?" He seemed genuinely impressed with the amount of degrees on the wall. He looked at the door too, trying to look out the little window on it.

The Neko noticed Danny trying to look out the little door window, and positioned herself between him and the door. "Those are just replicas" she answered, indulging in his question but not diverting her gaze, or giving him any kind of opening. "My real ones are probably in storage on Yamatai. Got 'em at Kyoto academy, so they aren't just fake ones I put up for fun" she explained, defensively. "Do you actually know what you're looking for?" She asked, calling the man's bluff. She could tell he didn't actually know what it was he was trying to get.

"I'm looking for ..." he remembered what he saw on the degrees. The Neko could see Danny's eyes narrowing at them on the wall. Doctor, Surgeon, Neuroscientist, Living OS Programmer specializing in the NH Series, Hemosynthetics - the list went on... And then it clicked - such skills in a place as far flung as this was no mere coincidence. The woman in front of her did something with bodies - body transfers. "...A body, that needs hiding in a place like this because it belonged to someone very valuable."

"You're a sharp one, aren't you." the Neko responded, smirking. She relaxed her stance, but continued to stare down at the crouching man. "Congratulations, you've figured out the secret. Now, the bigger problem: Escaping this shithole. Unless you got a good way out, you should head back up that vent and stop wasting my time."

"Same way I got in," he replied, thinking that she meant the whole planet rather than just the base and its inhabitants. He then started walking to the door. "Oh," he turned back around. "What's your name?"

As he Asked, Danny would see the Neko's fist expanding into some amorphous mass, which pinned him to the wall by the neck. She smirked once more. "Samir. Doctor Samir Gutierrez." she answered, smiling sweetly. "You have ten seconds to explain why I shouldn't cut your head off."

He looked down at what was pinning him to the wall, pressing against him and webbing out across him against the wall. He squirmed and a half blush could be creeping across his cheeks. This feels nice, he thought before trying to answer her. "Because I haven't tried to kill you either and you don't seem to be calling the rest of the facility on me?..." He tried to remember what she said. "And who is 'he' anyway?"

Samir quirked an eyebrow. "Either you're really, really incompetent, you're telling the truth, or both." she noted, letting him go. "But in this case you're on to something. 'HE' is the one who imprisoned me, and all the others here. They call him Mr. Boss and he's one of those crazy Mishhu whatchamacallits."

"-He- sounds like a jerk," Danny shrugged. He then looked back at the door and wondered. "Is he the one running things around here? Maybe I can help you get out."

"He's running the place, yeah, but he leaves all the time, and leaves those stupid Mercenaries." Samir relaxed once more, her hand coalescing back into, well, a hand. "So who are you looking for. Obviously you aren't looking for me, since I'm not important enough to warrant a search party, or so the SAoY thinks.. bitches..." the Doctor muttered, annoyed.

"Ellen," he said into his earpiece. "Who am I looking for exactly?"
"I can't tell you." Aerin responded. "Not yet. But if it's safe, I can follow you down. You said there was nothing down there, but I heard voices and a thud, so obviously you aren't alone anymore." The tone of the voice changed, subtly designating that the one in ultimate control had changed- something Danny wasn't aware of.

"Ellen?" He paused. "Who are you?" Samir could see Danny becoming nervous. He'd heard that tone of voice somewhere before.

"I'm your employer" the voice specified over the Radio. It was followed by the quiet shuffling of another person entering the ventilation, pistol belt rubbing slightly against the floor of the shaft, and it continued toward the grate Danny had oppened and hopped down. Ellen's black-haired, teal eyed head poked over the edge, surveying the room cautiously before dropping in as well.

"I don't think my employer likes Mr. Boss either," Danny explained to Samir.

"I indeed, Do not." Ellen answered, her voice back to normal. "I need to see the tanks. I believe someone is here, but I refuse to say who until we find her." She was all business at the moment, her hands crossed over her chest, and she was staring down Samir, whom was staring back at her.

"I can take you there, but I can't guarantee you'll survive the trip." the Neko doctor responded.

Danny shrugged. "I was struck by lightning - what could be worse?" he frowned visibly.

The women both quirked their eyebrows at Danny, and then shrugged, an oddly simultaneous gesture. Ellen shook her head, and then turned to Samir. "Take us there, I have backup if things go south." She was referring to the black powered armor stashed at the top of the elevator, though neither Samir or Danny knew that.

"Well, it's your funeral." Samir intoned, opening the door slowly and carefully, and leading the pair out into the hallway.
 
It creaked, just a little bit, but still it was an odd noise that those whom were used to nicer places like Yamatai or most space stations wouldn't be familiar with. Slowly, gently, it swung out into the hallway, and Samir strode confidently forth, as if she knew she could not be hurt. She looked down the hall, and then waved the two newcomers on.

Ellen crept cautiously forth, gun drawn, and peered through the small window in the door, which confirmed that there was, indeed, nothing in the hallway. Already the Doctor had begun strolling down the hallway, her completely nonchalant demeanor just a little bit disturbing to the black haired Yamataian who followed almost skeptically behind her.
 
The creaking sound of a door was one of those things Danny was always used to. If it was alive or moved, it made a sound. The way Yamataian doors just seemed to slide open into the walls as if on their own volition and without a sound always unnerved him. Hearing one of these doors again gave him a sigh of relief.

He trailed behind Ellen, fiddling for something in his backpack. He drew it out and kept it by his side with both hands. It was the stun pistol that he was talking about. He loaded a cartridge into the front of the gun with a click and kept following the strange Nekovalkyrja. After his encounter with it that Ellen did not see, he was curious about her abilities, maybe that's how she snuck up on him so suddenly and swiftly. Pinned against a wall by pseudopods, it was unlike anything he'd ever seen; or felt.

In the back of his mind, he thought that his superiors back at Lazarus would never believe anything he said about this.
 
It was an odd feeling- thusfar, excepting the short confrontation with Samir, Ellen and Danny had been able to move through the compound entirely unopposed. Their boots fell harder upon the floor than they would have imagined; normally there would be other sounds masking the footfalls, but now three sets of feet made their own distinct noises as they went down the hallway. Near the end of the hallway, it made an intersection, going deeper into the underground tunnel system that served as the NMX hideout.

At the corner, Samir stopped, suddenly, and Ellen made a hasty halt just behind her, making sure not to go any further. Samir handed Ellen a piece of paper, on which was scribbled a nearly blueprint-perfect map of their immediate vicinity. An arrow pointed to the left, but around the corner there were three dots marked "enemy". The Neko doctor turned to look at Danny and Ellen, quirking an Eyebrow and motioning with her shoulder, indicating they should continue. Ellen handed Danny the sheet of paper, but before they could do anything else, Samir strode around the corner, an act which elicited three simultaneous gun cocks from around the corner, the quiet metallic noise echoing off the featureless walls of the tunnel; But the Doctor was not fired upon as she continued strolling.

Confused, Ellen Motioned to Danny to follow, and practically threw herself across the corridor, gun drawn and firing- however all her initial burst managed to do was draw enemy fire- Leaving an opening for Danny to take advantage of.
 
"No heavy guns, no pyrotechnics, no huge explosions, Danny. To be truly effective, you must learn subtlety. Fortunately, you don't like drawing attention to yourself so that's half of the lesson taught..."

Franz's words echoed in his ear as examined the piece of paper in his hands that'd been passed to him by Ellen. One, two, three. Enemy what, though? There was only one way to find out and he was thinking of a smart way to go about it, but Ellen jumped ahead. The sounds of gunfire made him shiver as the loud sounds echoed between the concrete walls.

Shortly after Ellen had leaped down the corridor, he saw no use in being subtle. Contact was made and he had to answer back with however limited an arsenal he had. He moved around the corner, darting out from behind Samir with his stun gun raised. He acquired a target and fired the stun gun at them as he was moving towards them. Two spikes connected by a wire each flew out and jabbed into the target and delivered a high voltage pulse - according to the manufacturer they were made to take down a Nepleslian or Yamataian, guaranteed.

And when he reached them he grabbed them under one arm and held as a human shield. However, to keep the voltage going on his target, he had to keep the trigger of his stun gun depressed.
 
Despite his swift, decisive action, the sight that greeted Danny was one he did not expect. Samir was strolling, simply walking down the corridor as if nothing was going on. Ellen had managed to land behind her, though she wasn't trying for it. Still, the really odd part was that Samir was being shot. Multiple times. Her clothes ripped and tore, fraying and charring where the fiery-hot bullets hit them, but Samir didn't seem to notice. Little clouds of grey exploded out of her back, just behind her lab coat, before being sucked back into Samir's body, the holes in her flesh disappearing and turning once more into smooth, neko-perfect skin.

Danny's human shield- a Nepleslian clone- wriggled and writhed, grunting a little bit but unable to cry out from the pain he was feeling from the stun gun setting fire to every nerve in his body simultaneously. A second Nepleslian clone paused his firing to take a look at Danny, and his newfound hostage, just long enough for Ellen to unload several shots from her pistol into his chest, dropping the NMX thrall to the floor in a bloody pile, leaving only an NMX Neko to defend the way through. She expertly kicked up the fallen man's weapon, catching it in her off hand, and pointed it at Danny, keeping the other one pointed at Ellen and Samir.

"Stop right there!" the Neko yelled, shaking a little bit as she tried to pay attention to three enemies. Ellen, crouched against the wall, had no choice but to comply, But Samir continued walking, heedlessly.
 
"No." Danny replied quietly as he released the trigger of the stun gun and popped the cartridge out with the push of a button. He'd need both hands to push another in, but he kept hanging onto his gently smoking human shield, staring down the Neko and using his short height to put his head behind the Nepleslian's body. He was wondering what Samir was planning though, because she was able to absorb bullets. He wondered if the stun gun would've had a similar effect on her - a no sell.
 
"Go ahead."
It was the doctor. She was closer now, almost at the lone defender. She was smiling, a cool grin, the confident expression of someone who knew they had already won. "I think i'm tired of playing Mr. Boss' little game now. The charade is up. So. Why don't you put the guns down, and I might think of letting you live." Samir's tone was icy, even and smooth. she stopped, mere feet from the Neko, whom still defiantly help the pistols, one at Danny to her side, and one down the hallway, directly at Samir and Ellen.

The Neko tensed, her fingers beginning to pull back on the triggers. There was a loud bang, and several things happened at once. Ellen fired, hitting the gun pointing at Danny. The gun went off, but instead of hitting its target, it hit the poor Nepleslian whom had been tased just moments before, causing him to jerk violently and then go limp, dead. The Neko's other gun fired, as well, ripping through Samir as the others had, but also like the others, it did nothing to stop the doctor, who's grin had warped into something that would make children cry. Samir's arm shot forward, a grey spike forming where the humanoid appendage had been, and it lanced through the neko, forcing her against the wall, before the arm retracted, dropping the impaled warmaiden to the ground. But she wasn't dead yet, and she held her gun back up, unloading its magazine into the doctor, whom now rushed her, leaping the barricade and lifting her bodily off the ground, slamming her against the wall one more time.

The Neko screamed as Samir's hand formed into a series of knives, which the Neko doctor then used to remove her head, dropping the bloody lifeless body to the ground.

Ellen came up behind, looking at the carnage of what the Doctor had done, blinking a few times. Her face was a mix of utter horror and knowing amusement, as if two wildly different takes on the scene were both trying to get their reactions across on one face.
"Ah, so you're an Eighteen." Ellen finally said, before looking away from the bloodshed and at their target- a door which was marked "Storage room"

"That I am." the Doctor replied simply, also looking at the door. "Unfortunately, It's locked, and they haven't given me keys. However..." Samir gestured toward a ventilation shaft to their left- the grate had been spattered with blood, but oddly for a vent, it had a handle.
"It's poorly disguised, but that's the control room for this place. If someone could go in there and hack the computer, they could get us inside very easily."
 
Well, at least his human shield had done its job. Normally they aren't as effective unless your target is wearing armour, since bullets had a tendency to overpenetrate and end up hitting you anyway. Perhaps he had cybernetics. However, it had served to perform another job too. When Danny heard the screaming stop, he looked out from behind the corpse he was holding, and dropped it with a thud.

He took a moment to stare at the walls and the floor, and his arms. His human shield had done another job. It'd kept the blood off of his face. He seemed to be equally horrified and fascinated by what he'd seen from Samir. The neko's arms were still slightly grey when he looked at her, before they shifted into a more pleasant looking shade of perfect skin. His teeth were chittering lightly and he wasn't breathing before he heard what the Neko said, absorbed in examining the blood all over his arms. "Oh, uh, of course." He holstered the stun gun and pulled out the hacking multitool that Lazarus had given him.

He pulled the vent open and bent down, giving Samir a look at his back and at how well defined the suit made him look. He didn't seem to notice as he started crawling into the vent and following where it went.
 
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It was not far into the control room, and when he arrived, Danny found it to be empty, something he was probably thankful for. The screens were all active and ready to go, as if someone had recently been there, however. Some of them showed security camera feeds, including views in places where they had already been. Apparently the cameras were hidden better than they had though, as their movements had been easily tracked. Regardless, the controls to open the door were already up, the lock command filling the screen for the most part, but it was a simple, dated system; Danny would have no trouble overcoming it.
 
Danny looked at the computer and its inputs, then held up his Lazarus hacking tool and pointed it at the machine. It said that it was too old to have a wireless input for the sake of security, and instead it gave him a list of steps to take to hack the computer and give it a wireless input via radio pulses. He sighed, put the tool down and propped it on some desk stationery and started reading it as he hunted and pecked at the keyboard to place a signal trigger. He then noticed a new 'switch' had appeared on his hacking tool. He pressed it, and the door opened.

"Cool," he commented idly before crawling back the way he came, blonde head poking out of the vent before the rest of him came through and he stood by Samir and Ellen.
 
It was eerie, as they walked in, moments after Ellen offered a hand and a tug to pull Danny back up. the room was dim, darker than the hallway they had just left, and it seemed to lead to a large machine of some kind. It bowed out of the wall, as if it were a large circular object the bulk of which was hidden beyond the facade that made this grand sort of entryway. Except, they were not alone. The lights flicked on, and standing in the middle of the room, was a lone Demon M1 powered armor. It stood there, defiant, daring them all to move.

"I suggest getting out of our way!" Ellen shouted at the armor. A muffled voice responded.
It simply said "I would suggest you leave, before you get killed, or worse."
 
"Worse?" Danny asked. "I guess worse is being stripped naked from that... cozy armour and thrown into the... the... the thunderstorms and howling winds outside," his meek voice trembled somewhat as he recalled his experiences being shocked by lightning - even though it was essentially harmless thanks to the armour he was wearing it still scared the crap out of him. In the back of his mind, that idea began festering and subconsciously scaring him as he crawled through the relative safety of the bunker's maintenance passages and sulked through the corridors.

It was the wider, open space here that bought that memory tumbling back out. "I... uh, don't think you'd like that." He was sincere with his motives to scare the man in the Demon Armour beyond belief, but stammering and fearful. "We can do that..." He was prepared to find the first piece of cover in the large room and dive for it. If the others could keep the thing distracted...
 
The Demon seemed unfazed, calling Danny's bluff as it stood there, and pointed the chaingun at the three before it. The weapon began to whir, and the barrels started to rotate up to speed, a sure sign that it was getting ready to fire. Now was the time to act, before it had a chance to do anything else. Samir simply stood, though unlike before, she seemed to be concentrating on something, holding herself steady as if getting ready to weather a storm. Ellen pulled out her pistol and began firing at the Demon armor, attempting to hit some of the weakpoints on the lightly armored legs of the Power Armor.

"Rose, We need backup" she yelled, apparently at nobody in particular.
 
Danny didn't know who or what Rose was. He didn't have time to ponder the possibilities, he only counted two people on the shuttle to this hellhole of a planet. Two people, two armours each - scratch that, no time to consider the possibilities. Danny had to use a trick taught to him from Franz, which was taught to Franz by his own mentor.

And that trick was to make a distraction and run for it. One of the pouches on his chest looked as though you'd keep a pistol magazine inside it. He flicked it open, drew a thin object, pulled a pin out of it and threw it towards the Demon power armour. Ellen and Samir could see that it was a smoke or flash grenade of some sort.

It exploded in a loud flash, dispersing speckles of glimmering silver and gold into the air with a magnetic pulse and choking smoke. It was a stun grenade that did double duty as a sensor baffling grenade. Danny took the opportunity to make a run to one side of the large facility and look for a way up, and around the Demon armour, hoping that someone hardy like Samir could keep it distracted while Danny thought of a way to take it on, perhaps find a heavier piece of equipment to destroy it.

Who was Rose, though?
 
The Chaingun began, after a few moments, to fire. Bullets sprayed everywhere, though Danny's quick moves meant that he was out of range of the initial burst when it went off, That, instead, mostly hit Samir, who seemed to be annoyed by the fact for than injured by it, as it really could only do very little damage to her NH-18 physique. However, in this situation, She couldn't do much back to the demon, lacking the capability to make a heavier anti-armor weapon or attack the Demon meaningfully.

Danny would get the answer to his question almost immediately, as a crashing, smashing sound came down the hallways after them, and suddenly Ellen's black powered armor smashed to the ground between the yamataian and the NH-18, its shields taking the force of the chaingun rounds as it deflected them away from its owner.
"Rose, keep it busy?" Ellen asked of the self-motivated armor, which nodded, tossing an origin Model Sixteen rifle to the woman, as well as an extra magazine.
"Samir, think you could distract it for us?" Ellen asked of the doctor.
"I suppose so, but you're going to have to buy me new clothes for this one!" Samir answered, suddenly dissolving into a pile of grey goo and flowing out of her ripped and torn doctor's coat, the rest of her clothes left on the floor with it. The mass of nanomachines flung itself at the Demon, dividing the pilot's attention between the NH-18 and the more potent Power armor that had suddenly appeared.

"Danny, I need you to get to that machine and start looking for any names that seem familiar listed in it!" Ellen yelled at the burglar whom she had brought along.
 
Bullets were hitting concrete walls and immaterial nanomachine flesh alike, making all sorts of wet thudding noises and cracks and snaps - the sounds of gunfire were inescapable in the room, echoing off of every hard surface available in the bunker's main room. The noises were doing Danny's ears in as he used said walls to get above the fighting and out of the Demon's field of vision. He was leaping up and off of them, looking up and using the lights of the muzzle flash to grab onto some air conditioning conduit - a large pipe half a metre in diameter.

The rubber boned, skin-suited and ectomorphic man scurried along the top of the unwieldy, dusty pipe on all fours. He was face to face with the giant cylinder with the computer at its base. It looked as though it would slide open when the need arose, probably when you put some numbers into the computer below. He grasped the pipe firmly, shifted his weight to one side and slid his body underneath the pipe and looked over his shoulder at the Demon armour. Determining that it was properly distracted by Samir and 'Rose', he let himself down and started trying to access the console.
Code:
[=-NAMES LIST-=--------[ooo]]
[Sorted by Date/Descending  ]
| Aerin Tatst               ^
| Al'sumir Terazine         #
| Richard Stanley           V
| Tervis Clayton            |
| Nick Rottenberry          |
| 'Clicker'                 |
| Braincase Twelve Eight Six|
| 'DDD Man'                 |
[=--------------------------]
A wheel turned in Danny's brain as he saw the topmost name.
"Your sunglasses." He held them aloft, they were miraculously unharmed in spite of everything that happened to the terminally unlucky man in the last few minutes.

"Ah, thanks" Aerin responded, simply, taking the sunglasses and putting them on. She walked away, seeming to ignore the man as he turned around and fell into an open maintenance hatch, inconveniently disappearing. She then turned, holding a KS card she had rummaged from a pocket, but, upon noting the man's disappearance, she simply shrugged, stuffed the card back in her pocket, and boarded her ship.
"Wh... what the...?" All of the customised Origin Industries items should've been a dead giveaway. Danny's time at Origin Industries taught him that Aerin Tatst not only designed and oversaw the creation of well made military and civilian level aerospace craft, she liked making her own customs - things like whatever 'Rose' was. Just something he glanced over when he was in the shuttle with this Ellen.

But what connection did the girl have to the CEO of Origin Industries? How did she know? So many questions and only the first answer had bowled his mind over for a strike. He wondered if the other answers to the other answers that lingered in the air would make him the perfect game of brain bowling, each answer like a ball rolling down the lane towards Danny's pinny brain.
 
The bolt on Ellen's Gauss rifle clicked home as she finished assembling the weapon, and suddenly the banging rattle of magnetically-propelled rounds breaking the sound barrier filled the room with an even louder din. Caught off guard by the fact that it had been assaulted by a power armor and an NH-18, the Demon's pilot had not expected the tiny woman in a leather jacket to be capable of packing such punch to add to the equation. The Demon's pilot suddenly cried out in muffled pain through the suit's cheap speakers, as Ellen had begun flinging anti-armor rounds at the PA's weakly armored legs, punching through the suit and causing it to collapse to the ground in pain.

Rose burst forth, taking advantage of the damage Ellen had done, and flung out a heavy articulated metal whip, which it used to restrain the armor's arms, while Samir coalesced back into her normal form, kicking the chaingun away from the Demon and rendering it more or less useless. Samir grinned, looking down at the armor with a bit of a maniacal grin. Perhaps she had been dreaming of a day when she would be able to escape, and exact her revenge on the people here. Today seemed to be that day.
"Oh, no, Don't get up. Trust me, your legs are much more likely to heal if you sit there and weep. Otherwise I'll be forced to kill you, and you wouldn't like that, now would you?" the NH-18 doctor gloated over the downed armor, standing triumphantly despite the fact that she had no clothing on.

"While I don't mind a nice shape when I see one..." Ellen began, throwing a jacket at Samir "Sometimes it's more professional to cover up, even just a little." There could be seen a slight amount of rosy blush on Ellen's cheeks, though aside from that she seemed unfazed, as if she had both a modest and immodest side, each of which was letting a bit of itself through. "Danny, you found anything yet?" Ellen yelled across the room, still holding the large Gauss rifle pointed at the restrained, whimpering, Demon armor.
 
Danny could hear the sounds of gauss rounds piercing through armour like paper and splattering viscera from across the room. He could hear the sound of a whiplike object too. He turned around to see what was going on and his face went beet red as he saw the naked Nekovalkyrja standing in the room and restraining the Demon armour. Ellen's tune had changed too. He recognised that indolent, carefree and domineering swagger. All she needed was a good pair of sunglasses and she'd be complete.

"I... I found what we were looking for, Muh-Ms. Tatst." He pressed a button on the console to show them what he'd discovered while facing them, face neutral and posture wavering ever so slightly.
 
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