RP: Cirrus Station [Episode 10] Cumulocirrus

"Man, I lucked out. I get to lift stuff, hang out with the station hotties and there's no crazy shit to ruin it" he said, running his mouth with usual aplomb. He saluted the administrator as the lift shuddered and began his descent.

"...Check it out, Claire, I think you've got a fan club. HEY, GUYS, IT'S RUDE TO POINT, NO MATTER HOW HOT SHE I- wait what the hell was that creaking?"

Jinxed. Again. One of these days, he pondered, he was gonna need to stop his brain from running his mouth all up in God's face. By the time he'd unslung his rifle and aimed it, the metal monstrosity was waving it's fleshling captives around. Seconds later, it left view. As the platform began to creak louder and the deadly fall commenced, he glanced around.

"Uh... You wouldn't happen to be carrying fluffy pillows on those crates, would you? Cause that'd be pretty awesome right now..."

MoonMan said:

"Uh, yeah," the squad member closest to the tunnel Tweak and the others had entered from spoke up, pulling out a rather large combat knife gingerly from the underside of his CSS suit's system pack.

Click to expand...

How long had this taken them? Tweak looked at the knife, then back down the tunnel to where the ice blockage started, then back at the knife.

Impressive. Not very smart, but impressive.

MoonMan said:

While Tweak and Squad 11 were conversing, George took Tweak's approval with a simple nod and began sliding on his belly through the maintenance tunnel [...] he pulled the weapons off and slide it out to the mouth of the tunnel, off to the side below Tweak.

Click to expand...

Tweak gathered up George's gun after he pushed it out, setting it against the wall of the junction chamber before returning to where she had been standing to wait. It seemed George was doing fine, so there wasn't anything more for her to do.

Without turning her head, the 'spacer neko glanced over through her tinted visor at the one guy who had professed a fear of cat ears. How would he react if she took off her helmet and cap right then? Based on what she had written for herself in her wake-up sequences, first would be shock, then the running and the screaming...

Shutting off her external speakers, Tweak sighed. Things were becoming...complicated. She was slowly streamlining her notes to ease the details of who she knew and what her relationships with them were, but there was becoming too much information for her to learn everything in any useful detail. There was even a warning now in her morning notice to not investigate everything or she would be left chasing link trails and even risk the probability that after reading everything, she would start randomly overwriting those memories. Not to mention there was more information than she could consciously take in even over a single day, what with the notes and files spanning months back. As noted before: complicated.

And that wasn't even taking into account the shocks she encountered in those "relationship" notes. Like the one that told her that her squad captain was in love with her, and that at the time she had actually returned the feeling. One note said he knew about her memory problem, so what did he expect from her? What was their relationship now? Were her feelings for him consistant from one day to the next? Today, for example, she wasn't exactly smitten with him, but he seemed nice enough. And she had tried to be concerned for him, which was why she had gone up to try helping with his cybernetic problem earlier...though, now that she thought about it, that was kinda stupid and probably out of character for her. On the other hand, at that moment she hadn't really cared that everyone was watching. Her entire squad. And her boss, and the SavTechs...

Tweak's face began to feel warm under her helmet. Let's go back to thinking before acting, okay, Tweak? Remember how to do that?

The neko's thoughts were inturrupted by a commotion. First faint bellows, as if from a large beast, then shudders that rumbled through the section's structure. Her first inclination was to vacate the area, but that meant getting George out of the tight spot he was in. She shed her own gun and dove into the access shaft before the real trouble started...

MoonMan said:

Back in the maintenance tunnel, the massive shaking and faint bellow from the action happening outside in the lift tunnel could be discerned from the soft hum of air passing through the tunnels. In the few seconds it went on, Squad 11 began to sit up rigidly, a handful of them reaching for their weapons. George paused midway through the tunnel, his belly perched on the lump of condensed ice. "Yo Tweak?" The Nepleslian man called out through his radio, his voice sounding a bit concerned. "What the hell was th-"

By this point, the creature outside had leaped against the wall, causing subtle vibrations to quickly turn to quaking shakes. The engineer, Ray, yelped in surprise and tucked himself into a tighter ball, whimpering as more of Squad 11 followed suite with shouts of surprise. George, however, didn't have much of a chance to shout out his own surprised protests. The man was more concerned with the creaking that suddenly began to drown out all other sounds, emitting from the section of tunnel directly under his stomach. The creaks, metallic in nature, continued to sound out, their repetition quickly growing in tempo and volume until it came to a single, crashing crescendo; the section of tunnel beneath him, frozen and brittle from the buildup of ice and agitated to breaking point by the series of harsh vibrations, broke beneath him, the broken tunnel in front of him leaning downwards now, its end in pitch darkness.

[...]The man exclaimed as he soon found himself slowly sliding forward into the black, despite his best efforts to keep from doing so. By some strange stroke of luck, George's foot caught one of the bars along the side of the tunnel that wasn't covered in ice, halting his sliding forward with a startling halt. This change of events didn't stop George from panicking, however.

"Tweak! TWEAK! I NEED HELP!"

Click to expand...

His feet moved swiftly ahead of her, clearly not under his own power and still beyond her reach. Tweak almost pushed herself forward, but found herself sliding too. Using her feet, she inverse-clamped to the interior of the tunnel, digging her boot toes into the sides of the shaft...which worked for half a second.

PANIC.

Metal spikes ripped out of her shoulders and hips, spearing the ice and stopping her forward motion cold. She was close enough now to reach George's lucky foot, locking her grip around his ankle. Flipping on the external speakers again, she called out.

"Calm down now, I have you. Um...we're kind of in a weird place now, so hold tight so I can figure this out." If it weren't for the spikes being metal, Tweak would have been panicking more than before. The spikes were odd, but still explainable for a Freespacer...somehow. For the moment, though, she had more urgent problems.

The spikes couldn't bend, so their primary use was keeping her still and were essentially pinning her to the ice shelf that Squad 11 had chipped out. She couldn't do anything with her feet, and her suit was doing nothing at all. No tools. She had to turn around, too, and find grips in the sides of the shaft. Part of her wondered what a bottomless, black pit was doing in a space station, but the rest of her ignored that part. There was probably a reason and she would have the rest of...well, that day, she supposed, to think about it when she and George made it out.

Maybe she could retract and re-make the spikes with more directional control or with joints to enable movement. With a little adjustment, she could work with one spike gone for a moment or so. Before trying that, though, Tweak looked around to try seeing if there were any other pipes or ledges like the one George's foot caught on that her gloved hands could find a purchase on once she figured out how to turn around or push herself backwards. Gloves and boots were such a hassle in these situations, making nimble fingers and toes clumsy and bulky.

"Are you holding up down there?"

Serra stripped off the jacket Claire lent her and, with a flex of her massive wings, held out her arms. "I can act as a parachute for about two hundred and fifty kilos worth of weight." She said, her hands making a small waving motion. "My grip's not that good so it'd be best to hold onto my arms themselves."

She had seen the "thing" that grabbed the dock workers and the administrator, she had pondered on what it was, or what it could be. But those thoughts are for when they're alive.

"I suggest you people decide quickly."

Shrugging indifferently, she went along with the other group, moving up with the captain while watching Serra shiver and listening to Stovaa try to chat her up again like a slightly adorable goon. Her faint distant smile wore off when the situation changed.

Claire froze, her eyes widened. She'd fought feral horny nekos, whores in armor, a drugged up psycho version of the WIA, but this was her first time seeing an actual... creature. She didn't see much, but she saw enough. To be fair, seeing... things was sort of to be expected among all the mad science on the cirrus station. But it still scared her.

If it weren't for her training she'd be paralyzed.

She quickly tuned in to the conversations going on around her. The others were wanting to stay? Crazy. "We've passed several floors already, just jump off. The worst you can do is drop from a ceiling and hit the floor kind of hard. Come on, we're not on the bay." She spoke quickly while moving towards the edge to get ready to jump off, glancing around for anyone that might be reluctant or too startled to move. Didn't want to leave anyone behind, after all.

Claire's misconception of the height wasn't without warrant; while the actual floor of the long elevator shaft was a very far distance down, behind them, another one of the platforms was beginning to quickly elevate towards them from below. From Squad 35's vantage point above, they could see several of the lift attendants waving their hands to garner their attention, motioning to their platform.

"Lift 6 is trying to position themselves closer to you all," Kess' voice called out to each of them through their radios inside their helmets. Although she couldn't accompany them personally with a volumetric image, it would appear the Savtechs had some sort of surveillance in the shaft; enough to know and coordinate a possible rescue. "You all need to jump before those crates push you off!"

The gap between the two platforms was fair, but manageable. Lenny Binks, who had recovered from the sudden visitation to their platform a bit slower than the others, stood upwards and came face to face with one of the smaller cargo crates that was closer to the squad as the platform began to shift and angle away. The heavyset ID-SOL, in a pure fit of instinct, heaved himself against the crate with a hefty grunt, managing to bring it to a slow, unsteady stop as he angled his upper body against it. Lenny held back the crate for now, but more were beginning to slide down, and should their addition weight prove too much for the ID-SOL, the team would have much heavier problems on their hands.

---

George, having come to a halt as Tweak grasped hold of his feet, heaved a sigh of sweet relief, his arms hanging down below his head into the darkness beneath him. The Nepleslian man looked upward (or, rather, downward) into the blackness, but could not gather how deep the area beneath the maintenance tunnel was due to the lack of light. "Jeez," George sighed, released an amused chuckle when he felt stable enough. "You really saved my bacon." A couple of Squad 11 members were beginning to scramble towards the mouth of the maintenance tunnel, wondering what had happened. They could see Tweak's feet planted there, but beyond that it was difficult for them to tell just what had happened.

However, before they could lend a helping hand pulling the two squadmates out, a very familiar creaking began to ring out again. This one gave even less warning than the previous, sounding out in the span of mere seconds before, in one last snap of frosted metal, what support the falling end of the shaft was resting upon gave way. The tunnel that Tweak and George were huddled in fell forward, as though on a hinge near Tweak's feet. When it swung completely vertical, the tunnel jolted to a sudden halt. The force of the stop was easily enough to jostle Tweak's feet out of their dug-in state, George's own legs slipping from her grasp as the two of them began to fall through the broken edge of the shaft and into the dark area beneath.

"ssssSSSSSHHIIIIIIIIITT!"

George didn't seem too happy about it.

"Jump, now! Go go go!" ordered Kokuten, pointing the other approaching lift. He grabbed Blake by the shoulder, and nearly threw the man to the other platform. The Captain kept a close eye on Lenny as he rapidly gestured to the others to make their way over to the other side. He wasn't going to chance having Lenny miscommunicate orders on something like this. He had seen the large man do the same to his smaller counterpart. Kokuten was going to drag the ID-SOL if he had to.

Claire, finally seeing the other lift and her chance.... stepped away?

Actually, she took two steps over and grabbed Serra by the waist, Hauling her over with the strength granted to her by her geshrin genes. She gets a small running start and slams a foot down onto the railing as she launches herself at the next platform after Blake. Her last thought before jumping being if Serra might still use those wings.

As he plumeted down towards the lift platform below him, Kokuten's grip still leaving impression upon his shoulder, Blake started to think. The cold air of the shaft was made even colder by the act of it whipping around him like so. He thought that whatever the strange semi-liqueous creature's origins were, it didn't freeze easily.

'Maybe it's alcohol-based life.' He thought, the notion crossing his mind just before the next platform came hurdling into his back from below.

Serra was bodily picked up and hauled over the edge of the lift by Claire by the waist. The entire turn on it's head of events was a shock and suprise to the angelic being, but the moment her feet left the safty of a solid surface, years of flight training took over and her wings flapped open at the apex of the jump, giving the two plenty of gliding time to land on the other platform safely.

To Claire, despite Serra's size, the woman was almost astonishingly light to pick up.

The sudden change of angle put more strain on Tweak's ability to hold on through her oversized gloves than she could handle. George's ankle slipped through despite her strong grip, and she only had a moment to consider the situation -- "Oh, shards..." -- before her spikes announced their failure to maintain their own perch on the slick, solid ice. They were only holding her in place because they pressed the neko into the ice below her, not because they were able to pierce deep enough to hang on. With a long, loud scratching sound, they scraped and scrabbled along the walls before Tweak was dropped head-first out of the tunnel. Being a neko, though, she quickly reoriented herself to fall feet-first while withdrawing the spikes. Impaling herself or George if she landed on him would only make things worse.

Now prepared, Tweak waited to land where she could and hope her teammate survived his own fall, watching the crawlspace move away from her in slow motion.

A balled fist glanced across Lenny's shoulder as Kokuten made his orders regarding the freefalling team members obvious.
"Eff the bloody crates, Lenny, time to bail. Nothing we can do here..." Stovaa bellowed over the sound of rushing air. The chance of the crates damaging anything that the actual lift itself wouldn't were slim to nothing, he decided. One thing was for certain, he wasn't fond of messing around on the lift platform. The more it fell, the more out of control it felt. There was a good chance it'd just fall away from the lift gear if it compromised the mechanics of it. Maybe.

His body tensed as he threw himself into a short sprint, needing to go one better than the other team members. If he just did a small jump he'd probably plow into one of the skinnier, more fragile colleagues he had. His legs compressed for a split second before he flew across the gap and over the head of Claire, landing a few feet clear of her and Serra in a heap, his landing lacking the grace and finesse of his take-off.

"...That was kinda fun... I don't wanna ride again, though..."

Down on the platform, one of the lift workers glanced up towards the drifting figures of Serra and Claire as they wafted down, granted a measure of stability in their plummet from Serra's large wings. The man, an ID-SOL of medium size, was quick to position himself into their trajectory and accept them onto the platform with some grace, albeit a bit awkward in the method. The others were not as lucky; their bodies were coming down quick, and the other lift workers were all fairly normal sized men; being injured by the landing was a definite possibility. As such, one by one, the other members of Squad 35 collided with the lift, the platform rocking gently with each landing. Stovaa's landing was a bit more profound, however, a few creaks of metal emitting from beneath the platform as his heavy feet planted against the metal plates.

Lenny, however, was still up above them on the slowly capsizing platform, still holding back the large crate. The uneven footing and weight pressed against him made it difficult for him to really find enough purchase to get out of his predicament. The large ID-SOL apparently had grasped this much as he looked behind him with a bit of worry, watching the others leap to safety.

---

The fall didn't last as long as the darkness below Tweak and George had hinted. There was a second or two of traversing through a vertical shaft before it opened up, a cold gust of air greeting the both of them as they fell into a larger, more open area. After a moment, Tweak would be greeted by the bottom of her adventurous plummet, which was surprisingly gentle; the 'spacer Neko would quickly find her fall cushioned by a bank of powdery snow. In the pitch blackness around her, Tweak could physically tell that there was a lot of it around her, this section of the station apparently receiving the worst of the bizarre climate control issues.

"Hey! 35, you okay?!" A familiar voice called out to Tweak from the radio in her helmet. One of the Squad 11 members she had met above was hailing her through the old yet trusty radio communication, and a little static aside it was quite clear. Not long after, Mimi's voice could be heard as well, calling out to Tweak. "Miss Tweak?! Squad 11 is reporting something wrong in the vent, has something happened to you and Mister George?" The Savtech sounded slightly distressed, clearly unable to see whether or not Tweak or George had survived their ordeal.

"Lenny, that's everyone! Drop that weight, and let's go!" ordered Kokuten, slapping the man on the back once or twice before turning around. He took a deep breath, getting over the initial chills of such heights. A wrong step meant a minute of reflection and an instant of deflection, but any more thought of that would make it a reality. He stomped forth, his armored boots striking against the surface of the platform as he leaped into the air over the side. His arms, raised in the air balanced him as he sailed forth. Cold air streams trailed off of him like the tail of a comet. The Captain seemed to perform his leap with much grace and dignity...

... Until his raised arms and hands froze, sending him into a rapid panic as he fell like a brick with little control of his forward ascent.

"Damn damn damn damn damn damn damn!"

MoonMan said:

The fall didn't last as long as the darkness below Tweak and George had hinted. There was a second or two of traversing through a vertical shaft before it opened up, a cold gust of air greeting the both of them as they fell into a larger, more open area. After a moment, Tweak would be greeted by the bottom of her adventurous plummet, which was surprisingly gentle; the 'spacer Neko would quickly find her fall cushioned by a bank of powdery snow.

Click to expand...

"OOph!" The neko hit somewhat harder than she meant to since she wasn't completely prepared to meet a solid surface so soon. Sort-of-solid surface, that is; the snow was also unexpected. Getting up from the three-point stance she landed in, Tweak looked around.

In the pitch blackness around her, Tweak could physically tell that there was a lot of it around her, this section of the station apparently receiving the worst of the bizarre climate control issues.

Click to expand...

Her eyes flicked into infrared mode to try locating George in the darkness, overlaying it on her normal range while she checked her suit for a proper flashlight in case she needed one. The pale blue indicator lights distributed across the suit were enough for Tweak to see a fair distance into the darkness, so she could make do with just those if needed, but she quickly shut down all power to her suit except for the radio and other essential functions.

From what she read in her notes-to-self that morning, there were definitely creatures on the station, and so far whenever something had gone wrong with a system, it was due to one of them. The larval thing in the sewage system, for example. So, until she had scouted the area, it probably was a good idea to keep out of sight. The lights on her suit indicated power flow to those areas, she guessed, so the only way to shut them off was to shut down. Even if they didn't indicate what she thought they did, shutting power off would shut them down anyway, until she figured out how to shut them off separate from everything else.

Who decided to put those lights on anyway? Especially so many...

"Hey! 35, you okay?!" A familiar voice called out to Tweak from the radio in her helmet. One of the Squad 11 members she had met above was hailing her through the old yet trusty radio communication, and a little static aside it was quite clear. Not long after, Mimi's voice could be heard as well, calling out to Tweak. "Miss Tweak?! Squad 11 is reporting something wrong in the vent, has something happened to you and Mister George?" The Savtech sounded slightly distressed, clearly unable to see whether or not Tweak or George had survived their ordeal.

Click to expand...

Tweak blinked, then glanced up out of reflex before resuming her search for George in the snowdrifts.

"I'm here and uninjured," she said, opening a channel to Mimi in addition to the one that was already open to Squad 11. "I don't know where George is, though. We fell about twenty meters, I think...it's a very open space, dark, and covered in snow where I am." She switched to another channel to hail George. "George! Are you alright?"

Serra, having been notified of her commander's problem by his frantic cries of high speed profanity, looked up and saw him falling with the grace of a human shaped brick. Giving the ID-Sol that caught her a sympathetic look, she dislodged Clare from her midsection and climbed onto the man's shoulders.

"Please excuse my actions, but I need to save a superior officer's life right now." She said to the man as she lowered herself down on his shoulders till her hands rested on the crown of his head, her wings extended and raised to full extension above her head. And with a grunt, she launched herself skyward in one massive leap, while her wings flapped, sending her up to meed Kokuten in mid air. Wrapping her arms around him, she tried to straighten themselves out as her wings extended out to the sides, again to act as a parachute.

Kokuten's legs bicycled as began to descend, yelping all the way. With his arms frozen, he couldn't control how he landed, and his panicking only served to make him feel as if he were going to land short. His heart-beat raced and the world seemed to slow down for him, making every mental second more brutal. If I break a leg because of a poor landing, I'll be useless! he feared, images of being dragged off to a Med-bay to sit and worry flashed through his mind until...

Wait a moment, was that a dove?

Suddenly a pair of arms wrapped around him, albeit with a decent amount of force, so he nearly slipped through those rescuing limbs. Luckily he was secured in his savior's arm, with his face comically planted into her chest, which seemed to set off a bell of who just rescued him.

"Serra!" he said loudly, as his face was muffled. He secured his legs onto her sides to hold himself to her. "Thank the Hand!"

Claire let go of Serra's waist as soon as they landed. She gave her a quick nod as she went to prevent Kokuten from trying to break the floor with his face. She looked up to see if there was anyone else that needed catching.

She sidestepped Stovaa's massive form.

She was thankful for Serra's help in not having a hard fall, and tried her best to make sure everyone else could get back on their feet as quickly as they could, certain that they weren't out of danger yet.

Serra, seemingly ignoring Kokuten's face comfortably nuzzled between her breasts, held onto him tightly as they descended safely to the waiting rescue platform. After a moment, Serra tapped Kokuten on the head.

"Um, Sir. We've landed, you can Let go of my legs." She muttered politely into his ear.

Not far behind Kokuten, Lenny had decided that he was quite finished with holding the heavy crate back from its inevitable plummet. One hefty grunt later, Lenny had heaved the metal box forward a foot or so, abruptly turning on his heel and attempting to make the jump as the crates behind him continued to slide down. The slanted plane of the sinking platform caused him to stumble, however, as he tripped over the edge of the ramp with a surprised, wobbling cry of surprise. Luckily, Lenny's acceleration was enough to clear the gap between the two platforms, but only by so much; the large ID-SOL's midriff collided with the end of the lift platform, his large upper body easily bending and breaking through the thin metal hand-rails. As Lenny began to slide off of the platform, his big arms scrambled for something to latch onto to prevent his plummet.

Behind him, several of the crates had reached the edge and were beginning their quick descent downward, luckily with not a soul in tow. They fell harmlessly down between the gap, one by one, each plummeting object warranting a loud, thunderous crash several seconds later as they collided with the ground below.

---

"You're in storage facility S-4 right now, then," Kess replied to Tweak's quick and decisive report, a small bit of static breaking in-between her words. "Surveillance is down, but I'm getting the lights online there now; try getting back to the upper floor, something has happened and your Squad is going to need your help."

As Tweak called out for George, she didn't receive an immediate response, instead the room became awash in faint, off-white light as several of the light fixtures on the tall ceiling began to flicker on. After what seemed like a very long moment, however, Tweak could hear George's voice waft in a little to the east. "Tweak... I think somethin's wrong," George said through a strained groan. Tweak would find the gentleman, waist-deep in a snow bank, his faceplate lifted and his head tilted downward in what seemed to be tired defeat. "I can't find my fuckin' legs Tweak! I can't find my legs!"

Kokuten nodded his head into Serra's chest before slowly loosing his legs gently, clumsily trying to reach his foot down to the floor before loosing the other. With a tap, he could feel they were indeed on the safety of some floor, so he let his other foot come down to rest. When his face freed itself, the Captain was nodding his head profusely in thanks.

"Your help is so much appreciated, Miss Evangelle! I'd fear for what would've happened if I--..." Kokuten almost tripped as he felt the platform shake, and shot a glance over at Lenny who seemed at risk of falling over the side. The Captain turned to run off and extend his hand, when he found out that his arms were still frozen above him.

"Someone help him!"