RP: Cirrus Station [Episode 2] Little Problems

Cyril more or less abandoned his hopes of getting a shower before patrol as soon as the sergeant yelled for everyone to kit up and assemble in the hall. Muttering depreciations under his breath, Cyril hurried back to his bunk and tossed his wash-kit up with his tail. It figured something like this would happen in their mickey mouse little unit, but that didn't stop it from being a pain in the ass. At least it sounded like he might get a chance to flex his technical knowhow, rather then just walking up and down corridors all day.

Wash-kit stowed, Cyril got in line for the tubes. Making pointless small talk with the other marines in the line (how's the station, cigs or cigars, beer or liquor), it started to dawn on Cyril that the tubes were a minor pain in the ass. Sure, it was nice to be able to access kit from anywhere in the station, but for something like kitting out a few squads of marines a wall of lockers might be faster. Never mind what might happen if the system failed in an emergency.

Still, in due time he was out of the line with a brand-new CSS Suit and V Rifle. Leaning the rifle against the wall, Cyril began to shut down and remove his tail (most military kit not coming with more holes then strictly necessary). It was only when he was about to remove the cybernetic from it's socker that he realized that some thoughtful soul had seen fit to equip his suit with holes for the tail. It even looked like the outer plating would form an air tight seal around the damned thing. Not one for looking a gift horse in the mouth, Cyril began to reactivate the mechendrite as he hurried into his armor.

It was a nice fit, apparently the quartermaster was slipping, the under suit wearing just as well as the skinsuit he had used back on Hampton. Clipping the helmet to the armor's backpack, he set his beret on his head and hurried to the hall. Spotting Keziah and Ozzy, Cyril fell in beside them with a sigh.

"Sarge's really got 'is kickers in a knot s'morning, eh?"

Mimi brought her hands to her mouth, giving the Elysian and Nepleslian sergeant a shocked look as she gasped at Serra's physical exchange. "Please!" Mimi pleaded. "There is no need to be violent! You both must-"

Kess, on the other hand, looked more angry and worried. The Savtech immediately materialized herself between the two, placing an open palm in front of Serra's view to garner her attention.

"That is QUITE enough!" Kess exclaimed harshly. "Serra, you must not have read the bulletin correctly...the two you cited were but two of many rules Cassefin placed on her machines. For your information, there are currently 152 different rules and regulations for her snack machines alone...most of them weren't mentioned in Cassefin's stupid bulletin," Kess motioned to the BioNutri-Snack and Montreal Reservoir machines with an off hand. "You, Serra, broke roughly 35 different rules last night. I said nothing because Cassefin never checks the machines down here, but you need to settle down, right now, and get in gear."

"In fact," she turned her head towards Lucius to address him as well as the angry angel. "Both of you need to put it and keep it in your goddamn pants. Serra, you need to get in your uniform and go with the others on your assignment. Lucius, right now, your main concern is getting this squad to their positions and working on the problem Cassefin sent us to fix. I don't care if they eat or not. I don't care about either of you, or your personal problems. Just do the work you've been assigned, before you get us all into trouble."

"You got that?"

Meanwhile, not very far from there...

"...what about NOW?"

"Sorry, cleaning crew in progress. Return at a later date."

*short pause*

"Ok, what about NOW? Is it over, NOW?"

"Sorry, cleaning crew in progress. Return at a later date."

"..." Dream paced back and forth, impatiently - no, impatiently was an understatement: there wasn't a word in the current language to express the amount of impatience that Dream was feeling, mostly because the current language didn't know her well enough.
Around her were scattered black, metallic crates - large and small - and some four of five bags made of some kind of plastic material.

In front of her, a blocky automata - one of those non-sentient drones. It was blocking her way, standing on the door of a room, apparently an armory or cargo bay of some kind.

"Come on, let me in. I've been waiting here the whole night."

"Sorry, cleaning crew in progress. Return at a later date."

"This is EXACTLY why everything on a starship should be sentient!!" She snapped at the automata. "Let me in! It's important! The spiritual health of the station itself will be put in jeopardy, if it goes too long without an active shrine and proper religious assistance!"

"Sorry, cleaning crew in progress. Return at a later date."

"You, you useless piece of scrap metal. Damnit. Let me in, or I'll make you sentient and, and, Ten Gods help me and I'll... I dunno, at least I'll have a reasonable conversation with you, I suppose."

"Sorry, cleaning crew in progress. Return at a later date."

"It would still be worlds better than hearing you spout the same line over and over like a broken audio recorder."

"Sorry, cleaning crew in progress. Return at a later date."

Things were going relatively straight there for a while Lorcan took his time to pop a piece of smuggled gum into his mouth to chew while he checked his PDA for messages from Fence. Only the one from last night remained so he jacked his headphones in and listened to the computer repeat the message to him and let a little smile flicker across his face at Fence's 'Fight, Fight, Fight' series of taps that obviously Lucius hadn't heard. Which he guessed was good because the Sgt. had been in a temper. Lorcan looked up long enough to watch the down play about the food and drink machines as Lucius and Serra argued. Silently he cheered for the angel. Then when she started handing out food he made sure to snag a packet of proto-jerky and a vita-water and quickly tucked them into one of the empty pouches on his belt to avoid Lucius's next explosion.

And then it was Serra's turn to get angry. Lorcan stared in both shock and awe as Lucius was thrown about and screamed at by the woman. Wow, she was just the most awesome woman of any kind he'd ever seen ever. When Mimi decided to try and intervene Lorcan sighed and stowed his PDA and headphones with his food and walked over, gently reaching up to put his hands on Serra's shoulders and let his hands clam down on them tightly. His thumbs were positioned to the point where he could easily cut off the blood flow to her brain if she didn't let go. For the moment he refrained from such an action. "Serra, common now, let the man down. Plenty of time to tear his head off later and if he knows what’s good for him he won’t be repeating such derogatory words to you." He said softly, shifting his thumbs to rub either side of her spine softly. "There is engineering to be done and there's only a few of us who can do said engineering we're going to need your help Serra..." He continued to murmur soothingly to the angel, hoping to pull most of her aggro off of Lucius, it was too early for blood to be spilt.

Serra was still fuming at Lucius through Kess. But, she was proven wrong in her statement that she didn't do anything wrong directly, so her stance had been damaged. Then Lorcan came and talked his talk to her. But, largely her anger had left her after she finished her little scene, shortly after he began to stroke her neck, did both Kess and Lucius notice her eyebrow twitch sharply as she let go of the Lt, and then shrug Lorcan's hands away.

Taking a half step to turn and glare at Lorcan, she moved away and went towards the Tubes to get her uniform and gun (which she never intends on using anyway).

Right before Cyril stepped over, Ozzrik leaned closer to Keziah and whispered, "I'll tell you a secret....my first post ever. We'll watch each other's backs? All right?"

Then he smiled wide and nodded to Cyril, "Good morning, and yes he does...something tells me he always will." With a shrug and a smirk he continued, "But crazy CO's are like assholes, everyone has one."

Keziah stared at Ozz for a moment, disbelief diffusing through her face. No way, he had to be lying, right? He looked like a stereotypical marine. Probably was lying, to make her feel better. He'd probably seen loads of combat.

Or maybe he wasn't lying.

The thought got shuffled around when Cyril spoke, and she smirked at him, then at Ozz. "At least he's doing his job, and not letting us run free and wild like 'Spacers with attention deficiencies."

Lucius's face turned red with rage as Serra handled him. What was wrong with this woman? She had to be certifiably insane. She was straight up attacking a military officer. And even more than that, she was being a typical Elysian racist. Lucius didn't understand why the Elysian's were so up on themselves. With how they acted, you would have thought they shit out the whole universe.

As she was finishing Lucius' cybernetic hand was an inch from grabbing Serra's throat. He was not about to have this pompous bitch tell him that he and all Nepleslians were inferior to these Elysians just because he was a Nepleslian. But he stopped as Mimi and Kess intervened.

What would anyone see in this woman? She's self-righteous, arrogant and a disrespectful worm. And she just insulted everyone who shared Nepleslian blood.

He put his hand back down as Serra released him. "Very well." He said quietly to Kess, his face still contorted in a scowl.

He pointed a finger at Serra. "Don't ever insult a Nepleslian."

With that he turned and marched out of the room. What a hypocrite. When he exited the door, he looked over the assembled CSS Squad. Not much to look at...

"Eyes on me. I better not catch any of you sleeping or goofing off on duty." Said Lucius, loud enough to be easily heard over the din of chatter. "Also, with th-... Where is my XO?" He said, a little louder and with a hint of frustration.

"Oh oh oh!" Mimi chimed in with a waving hand, her face reverted back to her standard smile as the tension left the room. The cheery Savtech leaped forward to address Lucius, giving him a quasi-salute.

"Miss Dream is currently standing right outside where Miss Cassefin wants us to go! It's Armory B, down the hall and to the left...Miss Cassefin wanted to make sure that everybody knew that this assignment would require all of our skills...so let's do our best!"

When Serra shrugged his hands off Lorcan let go and stepped back a few paces to give the girl room. His eyebrows arched at her glare and they knit together as she stalked off angrily towards the delivery system. Was it something he'd said?! With a slight backwards glance to Lucius in time to see the man point, speak and then turn and leave. Wow, was Lorcan invisible again since Lucius had someone else to focus his fury on?

His frown grew as he stood there and after a long moment of decision he picked his loyalty and stalked off after Serra, looking for something beneath his bed before finally taking a seat on it. He looked over at her and watched her get her CSS suit and weapon. In a soft, yet un-usually caring tone of voice he asked "I know Lucius can come across as a complete ass, Serra, as some of the others... most of the others but I'm here if you ever want a friend..." and then he slid off his bunk and slipped away quietly, listening to the silence.

His offer was straight and true, he'd never been allowed to hate someone just because they were different. He'd seen many a street fighter get killed that way, because of the prejudices they had for others. He used this loophole to get by out there on the streets, planning on some fighters not giving their best just because they thought another was inferior. Most of them ended up dead or hurt. Lorcan slid past Lucius once he was out in the hall, hearing the tail end of Mimi's comment. Lorcan slid his helmet on and then latched it and pushed down the visor, cutting down the blinding glare of the lights on his eyes. After the dimly lit room, out here was unbearable.

"Alright." Lucius said with a slight sigh. Everything seemed to be a hassle in this station. He swept an arm in the general direction of the hallway.

"Let's go." He started walking down the hallway towards where Dream was.

Upon arriving at the blocked doorway to Armory B, they would immediately see Dream and her multitude of luggage sitting outside the bulkhead, before a very vanilla-looking automata. The non-sentient AI stood silently in front of the door, constantly repeating the same drab, boring reply to the addled little Freespacer.

"Sorry, cleaning crew in progress. Return at a later date."

However, this time, things were different. The Automata looked over at Captain Lucius and his men stood silent for a moment, his inner workings processing onward. After a short span of time, the machine stepped to the side and bowed slightly, motioning to the open door.

"Captain of Cirrus Station Security Squad #35. You and your men are expected. Administrator Circuitbreaker Peke Twenty-Two is waiting for you."

Inside of the small room was...nothing. A few metal racks and storage shelves lined the walls, but aside from a few hooks and pieces of garbage littering the floor, the entire "armory" was bare. There was, also, nobody in the room...from first appearances, perhaps. Near the corner of the room, in an area noticeably cleared of objects, was a large metal grate that had been recently disturbed and was laying against the gaping hole at an odd angle. The door quietly slid shut behind the crew as they entered.

Otherwise, there was nothing.

"So Peke was the 'cleaning crew', huh?" Dream said to the Automata in a rather harsh tone, before storming inside the Armory without a second thought - she didn't even pay much attention to the marines that had just arrived.

"So, what did you need our team for?" She asked in the hole's direction. "And, did you just spend the whole night here?"

Said she. Who has spent the whole night trying to GET in there.

"...did you hear something Goat?"

No sooner had Dream spoken, a tiny voice floated its way into the room from below the metal grate. Small clinks and clatters of metal on metal could also be heard.

"...'cause I thought I heard something. Let's go see!"

The sounds suddenly began to grow louder and louder until, quite suddenly, a rush of actions erupted from the hole as they literally threw the metal grate outward. Twenty-something Freespacer Junkers skittered chaotically as they scrambled out of the duct, stopping a few feet from the maw and waiting patiently for what was REALLY making all the ruckus...

Slowly, an enormous automata climbed its way out of the maintenance duct, one giant looming arm at a time. When it fully emerged, it was easy to see how shoddy the construction of it was; it looked as though the architect merely slapped on anything and everything he could to make the robot more acceptable. Its posture was awkward and uneven, leaving it forced to scrunch forward and support it's heavy upper weight with its giant forearms. Several sections of its body were missing, exposing wire-frame and mechanisms whirring beneath. The faceplate was little more than a giant circle of cut plate metal, fixated with a large nut and a burnt lightbulb for eyes and an impossibly-happy grin painted where the mouth would go. Aside from the other knick-knacks, one in particular would be of much interest to the occupants of the room; a small child's carseat, moldy belt-buckles and faded patterns prominent as they stuck out from the automata's arched back.

And sitting comfortably in that carseat, wide inquisitive eyes squinting in the newly-provided light from the fluorescent light fixtures, sat Circutbreaker Peke Twenty-Two. "OOOOOOOO! You guys must be the gear-heads Ad-Meister Cassyfine sent me!" She squealed in delight as she smacked her automata on the back of the faceplate. "Goat" took that as a 'let me down' sign, and quickly knelt down to allow its passenger to disembark.

Peke jumped off and strode towards the group, standing no taller than four or so feet. Her frame was thin and child-like but markedly Freespacer, without a doubt. A well-defined mechanical arm fixed upon a small waist sporting a belt dangling with, what appeared to be, bacon-scented car freshener strips. Short ragged brown shorts and an equally tattered and patched mechanics jacket holding and unknown number of tools and spare parts, all topped with with a toothy grin below eyes previously lined with smog-covered goggles, supporting a modest crop of dark-green hair pulled into a single sideways pony-tail.

All of this, however, paled in comparison with what accompanied the little Cirrus Administrator when she went to meet the CSS crew; an odor, so incredibly pungent and powerful that anyone coming within roughly five feet of her immediately lost a few nose-hairs to the overwhelming smell. It was as if a century-old skunk and a rotting orchard of crap-fruit had a son, and a flaming sack of gorilla hair and vat of steaming vomit had a daughter, and THOSE two mated to form one giant, grotesque super-smell that came close to deadening nerves as soon as it touched the subtle flesh of anyone unlucky enough to smell it.

In other words, Peke smelled horrible. And she apparently had no idea.

"Man, am I glad to see you guys. Ad-Meister said you all are taking over the repairs...that's good! Because now I can go back to working on the station automanufactory! I hope you guys brought some big wrenches!"

Tweak remained in her bunk, comfortably ignored, but uncomfortably left in the suddenly-silent room.

What she had read cleared up her situation. And her past self had not sounded very satisfied with the arrangements being the way they were. But at the moment, she didn't really have any problem with them, aside from the number of people tromping around, arguing, and shoving one another into bedposts and walls. She still didn't like being around lots of people. That was as much ingrained in her personality as her love of machines. Which, if Mimi's announcement of the squad's daily assignment was any clue, sounded like Tweak was going to get to work with today.

If she got around to getting ready.

"OH!" The neko suddenly went into a flurry of motion. After taking a shower so quick that she was dried off by merely speed of movement, Tweak stood in front of the pneumatic storage tube and stared at it a moment, trying to figure out how to work it. It was where everyone else had acquired their uniforms, so...

She tapped it. She tapped its control panel. Then she tried talking to it. Well, sentient computers were usually accessible by vocal commands, right?

"Um...hi...I, uh, need my uniform. I'm -really- late, but can I have it? Please?"

"Hey, Peke." Dream greeted him informally. No need for introductions between the two, apparently: they acted as if they already knew each other. "What's the problem here? What needs to be repaired?" She asked, casting a glance at the twenty Junkers.
She patted one of them on the... the upper part however it was called, almost as if it were a cat or a puppy while talking.

Apparently, the stench didn't bother her. Either that, or Freespacers didn't have a sense of smell.

Cyril had been about to say something witty, or at least half that, when the Sergeant appeared in the hall. Cyril had been fortunate enough to make it out of the barracks before Serra threw her little tantrum and all the flak associated with that unfortunate little event, which meant that all he had to work out the sergeant's mood was the expression on his face and the muffled sounds of excitement from the barrack.

But that was all that was necessary to convince the wiry tech sentry to clam up. With a slight 'I hope we live through this posting' type glance at Keziah and Ozzy, Cyril fell in behind the sergeant.

After a short trek through a whole bunch of halls that looked more or less the same, the squad arrived outside a blast door labeled ‘Armory B’. He had a second or two to take in the room before a bevy of small drones pushed their way through a panel on the floor, followed shortly by a rather large and intimidating looking automaton.

Cyril’s first response to the giant automaton pushing it’s way out of the floor was to drop into a combat stance. Sliding his right leg back and around to provide a side profile to the machine, his right hand dropped to the butt of his pistol with his cybernetic arm leading his body. Getting shot in it would hurt like a bitch, but not as much as taking a bullet in his organ sack.

But when the beast, or more aptly the small woman riding on its back, introduced itself as Peke Twenty-Two relaxed back into a standing position, leaving the division head to their illustrious sergeant. Lacking an immediate threat or task, Cyril looked around the room, and noticed one serious lacking it had as an armory. Cyril scratched the back of his head and looked over to Mimi.

“Um, begging your pardon, but, eh, where’re the guns?”

Dream glanced at Cyril and rolled her eyes. Well, her only visible eye, at least. "Because you keep weaponry in warehouses and locales under maintenance or repair, right? What about 'safety first'?" She sighed.

Cyril shrugged. "I've seen 'em stored in worse ma'am."

The image of Kess materialized next to Tweak as she fiddled with the Pneumatic Delivery System, glaring at her for a moment before activating the mechanisms inside of it. After a shore moment, Tweaks suit and weapon arrived in the transport capsule.

"Suit and and hurry to the others. Try not to get distracted."

---

Mimi shook her head and smiled apologetically.

"I'm sorry, but I cannot tell you where the items in this room have been moved. I have been ordered not to disclose that information at this time. But there used to be weapons in here, I believe."

Peke wiped a bead of sweat from her brow and nodded with a quick sigh.

"Yep, but there ain't any now!"