RP: Cirrus Station [Episode 7] It's All Fun and Trains

Blake shifted on the cold floor of the tram for a moment before sitting up suddenly. As he looked around, he noticed that he was on the runaway tram, and the crane cart was nowhere in sight behind him. In fact, the rear car seemed to be missing as well. Blake nursed a wound that seemed to have resulted from his being propelled from the crane-cart onto the back of the tram. He could only guess what kind of things had gone wrong when he pushed the accelerator forward.

Without a moment more thought, he snatched up his HHG, lingering conveniently near his landing spot; and made his way to the remaining members of the CSS squad in front of him. Blake moved towards the members of the group that weren't advancing on the door into the next cart and threw a quick salute; wincing with pain.

"Er, I'm... uh, reporting for duty." he mumbled weakly, "P-p-Pee-Three-See Morris at your service."

Kokuten looked up at the ceiling again as he heard the trudging Spacer feet above him, speeding ahead of them. He looked over at Noboru and then and down the way of the tracks. The Captain turned his attention to the back door, and was about to call for Akio, but...

"Er, I'm... uh, reporting for duty." he mumbled weakly, "P-p-Pee-Three-See Morris at your service."

Click to expand...

It was then that Morris had captured Kokuten's attention. It wasn't too clear how he missed the man, but that didn't matter at the moment.

"Alright, Morris, you're with me." Kokuten ordered, the green-glow behind his visor brightening. He gave him a thumbs up and then thumbed towards the front of the tram, and then began to hustle off in that direction. "Noboru! Let's go! Squad! Double-Time!"

"Aye sir!" Noboru shouted. Caught in the heat of the moment, he didn't realize that his shouting was still channelled through his suit's external speakers. As such, his voice boomed all the way down the train car and into the tunnel. Regardless of what people heard of him, Noboru stamped off down the traincar's spine after Method.

He raised his pistol as he suddenly realised he wasn't alone. A Junker leapt at him from the front of the train car, pincers flailing. Noboru barely had the presence of mind to duck his head as it went flying past. Its claws scrabbling for purchase, the Junker - red eye glowing - skidded across the roof and plunged over the edge, landing heavily on the tracks.

The Yamataian PFC grinned. Now that that matter had been taken care of, it was just the other few on the roof that were now looking at him all angry like. Taking long strides and building speed, Noboru leapt straight at the Junkers, shouldering them out of the way as he skidded to a landing on the far side of the car, taking a headfirst landing on the narrow walkway. His head hit the cushioned interior of the helmet as he flopped down, listing dangerously to one side as he threatened to plunge down onto the tracks. Noboru's hands scrabbled to get a grip on the walkway for a moment before he established his grip and pushed himself up, crossing briskly into the frontwards car.

Turning as Claire neared, Deacon reached for the handle of the door and opened it at Kokuten's order to move out. The Kohanian moved with the opening door, but in the opposite direction, so as the door opened to the right, Deacon entered the room going left.

It was a movement that his drill sergeant had called 'Slicing the Pie', and it was a move he found was very effective for entering a room, and not inhibiting the progress of his fellow team members. After a quick sweep of the inside of the car, Deacon got up off his one knee and started slowly making his way up the walkway, cybernetic eyes flitting back and forth with the soft clicking of them going from IR to EM and finally going back to normal. Along with his eyes, he was also sniffing in short little bursts to pick up any smells, while ears swiveled slowly to search for any sound that was not the junkers skittering, or the click clack of the out of control tram.

Claire had started to feel concerned if Deacon had heard the order or not when he entered the room and scanned it clear in about the time it took her to blink twice. She followed after, weapon raised and senses open for movement or sudden noises.

((Sorry, effort is a bit low, not much to go on.))

Stovaa followed the front team, Peke perched on his shoulders with a firm grip of his helmet.

As the front team swept the next car, the hulking Id-Sol's attention was caught by some movement. His eyes focused on it and he ducked through the doorway, eyes studying his target carefully.

It wasn't an enemy combatant, or even a suspicious object. For several long seconds, Stovaa maintained his intent vigil of Claire's posterior before breaking his gaze away, glancing at his surroundings. "Hopefully, no-one noticed that, he thought to himself.

(Not much to do really, just follow the leader)

As Kokuten's small group of CSS members entered the next car, several points of interest would be there to greet them. For one, the head of the engineering tram was, in fact, empty and bare save for the control panel and large computer box on the metal ceiling. It looked fairly harmless as soft lights and gauges blinked and spun in tune with the runaway tram's rapid motions.

---

Above the tram car, Method's wayward, heavy-footed kick connected square into the underside of the junker directly in front of her, the force flinging the drone off of the tram car's roof where it harshly collided against the clear durandium glass plating. There was a slight flash of malfunctioning metal against the starry space behind the plating which instantly sped out of Method's view.

Noboru's dive through the other junkers had much of the same effect. With their front legs reared upwards, the little drones did not have much in the ways of gripping the frictionless roof. Noboru would have little trouble gaining ground on his careful climb to safety; the junker drones must have realized that their dwindling numbers were no match for broad shoulders and steel-toed boots, and the remaining drones skittered away along the side of the tram.

---

There was little else in the car. The seats were bare, the only real sounds coming from the track itself as it bled through the glass windows running along the side. In the center of the car, however, sat a single object laid flat upon the ground. It was small, about the size of a playing card, but thicker; those savvy to current Nepleslian technology would instantly recognize it as a Savtech unit. And above the small device, floating amongst a veil of faintly pale white light emitting from the center of the unit, stood Kess with her uniformed back turned, her image no larger than a foot tall. At least, her volumetric representation. As Squad 35 entered, the familiar Savtech turned around slowly to face them.

The volumetric image depicting her, delivered by the Savtech unit, was portraying a different Kess than what Squad 35 had been used to. There was, strangely, no color in Kess' image but simple grays. The image itself seemed muddled and constantly twitched and broke, leaving flat lines of visual static in their wake. When the image was clear enough to recognize, Kess' expression was one of extreme duress, her eyes tired and strained and her motions weak and sluggish. The Savtech opened her mouth to speak, the sound emitting from the Savtech unit below her being little more than a strained whisper, indiscernible from the racket the tram was making.

"Kess!"

Elbowing her way past Deacon and quite clearly forgetting her orders, she rushed past her squadmate and knelt down, picking up the box after holstering her weapon. She held it up to her face so that she could better hear what the savtech was weakly trying to say.

"Kess! Sweetie, what's wrong? Did someone do this to you?" She wasn't voicing the suspicion that she was somehow the one making the train go out of control. But if she was, Claire highly doubted it was her idea or her will. The speeding tram was still a concern, but she figured trying to communicate with the savtech was about the most helpful thing she could do, as it may be the quickest way to learning how to make it stop.

Summoned by another long, complicated series of events from what was supposed to be a day off duty, Tweak stood on the platform that ran along the tracks, looking out at the pile of wreckage and a stranded tram. She was uniformed and ready, with her new 'brain' in the holster that used to carry her journal.

She had gotten the call to action in the middle of transferring her journal's records into the memory unit, so she had flipped through the rest of the book and uploaded the images of the individual pages instead of bothering to decrypt, memorize, and re-encrypt them. At the moment, she knew who most of the old-timers were, had access to minor information on the late-comers, and was left with no clue whatsoever who the newbies were...but that had little to do with her current status, staring at a pile of wreckage on the tracks.

The neko 'Spacer put her hands on her hips, surveying the scene. She had an idea of how long the track was and managed a reading on the approximate speed of the runaway tram, which gave her an reasonable estimate on how long she had to clear this area and give her teammates more time to do what they needed to. So...

"...Let's get to it," she murmured from under her helmet, darting out across the tracks to the tram where the rescued persons were, directing them to the access platform and the nearest station. Once everyone was safely off the tram and a good, loooong distance down the track (and everyone was in a hurry to get away, knowing what was speeding back around the tunnel toward them), Tweak began categorizing the wreckage and planning the removal of said wreckage.

The main tram car was in fine condition still, and it was on the correct track. The second car, too, could stay 'til last. The third car, the one brought down by Blake's ramming maneuver, was the real mess. That, along with the trashed crane car and the second maintenance car beyond that...Tweak tossed several smaller pieces of shattered runner housing from the runaway tram's track toward the stopped tram's side of the track while checking for anything else that she may have missed. Like cameras. Something to use as a lever to move extra-large objects would be nice, too.

Seeing that the only apparent hostiles were already done for, Blake holstered his HHG and shuffled closer to Kokuten. "Uh, Captain." he said, "I'm sorry, but a lot has happened since I got here and... Well, I just don't know what is going on at this point."

He smiled weakly and scratched the back of his head in spite of himself. He didn't feel too alert from his recent tossing. As a result of this; his normal level of confusion was increased even more.

Noboru didn't look at the tiny SAVTECH being projected from the card-type display unit in front of them. He kept his pistol raised, the .45 GSP pointed at the back door of the tram. He was positioned to keep guard for the Junkers which were now in retreat, and hopefully wouldn't come back. But, just in case, Noboru kept his gun up.

Known to everyone but him, it was more likely that the Junkers would come through the windows instead of the back door. But, it was Noboru standing guard, so he wouldn't be aware of that fact until thirty seconds after the windows had been broken.

(for the sake of lessening confusion, I will be trying to make a layout of where everyone is in the OOC sometime soon. Feel free to ask questions in the meantime.)

A couple of miscellaneous onlookers watched Tweak work, most of them being confused and bewildered maintenance teams and handfuls of scientists, their travel plans for the moment delayed. Farther down the track and slowly approaching, Tweak would detect two familiar silhouettes as they traversed the side of the tracks in hurried fashion. The two figures turned out to be, miraculously, George Resetti and his ID-SOL cohort, Lenny Binks. The two CSS members had not been as fortunate as the others when the major collisions began to happen, both of them being thrown from their crane car and onto the track. Resilient as they were, the two began to pick up the pace as they noticed that they were approaching a tram station, and were surprised to see another CSS member amongst the wreckage. Of course, with Tweak's helmet on, the two could not immediately tell who the lone neko-in-disguise was.

As George climbed aboard the tram station dock he took a moment to catch his breath, his helmet fogging slightly with each huff. "Yo...buddy..." George called down the Tweak while Lenny attempted to clumsily scale the height back onto the platform. "Need a...a hand?"

---

As Claire delicately retrieved the Savtech unit, Kess' image turned to her and stared at her with pained intent. Claire's request for explanation from the Savtech, however, was not as successful as she would have preferred.

Deacon would be the first to truly sense what was coming, what with his heightened senses. A loud scrapping sound, different from that of the train, ground its way across the side of the engineering car itself until it reached the large set of doors running along the side, farther along the front car. Then, at all once, the tram shook harshly as a figure quite literally exploded in from the set of sliding doors, caving the two sheets of metal in easily as it rattled the very tram on its tracks with its entrance. The figure was roughly 9 feet tall...even taller if it were not hunched over so, like a large gorilla. The various bits and bobs of miscellaneous machinery littering its body quickly gave its identity away as a Freespacer automata...however, the single, uncharacteristic children's car seat welded onto the large robot's back instantly revealed the figure to be Administrator Peke Twenty-Two's automata cohort and personal assistant, Goat.

"GOAT!" Peke shouted angrily from her perch. "What the crap, I told you to fix the tram!"

Goat's single large yellow-lensed eye trailed onto each Squad 35 member before falling upon Claire and Kess in the center. Kess turned to look at Goat, letting out more listless whispers as she turned her back to the rest of the squad. Goat, in return, let out a strange growl, akin to a mixture of the sound of spinning sawblades and hissing steam as it lurched forward at the two. Using its large forelimbs, Goat grabbed the Savtech unit out of Claire's grasp, using his other limb to shove the woman back to the rest of her squad. Kess' volumetric image fizzled out and faded away in responce, the large Automata delicately placing the small device into a cavernous nook in its chest.

"I'm sorry, but many has happened since I got here and... Well, I just don't know what is going on at this point."

Click to expand...

"To be honest, not much so far, I know we need to stop this tram by reaching the forward car. From there, we can stop this madness." explained Kokuten as he pointed towards the front car. With that, he pushed his way ahead to the next car, but stopped when he saw the image of Kess sitting on the floor. The Captain observed the path from behind him as Claire assessed the situation with the A.I. He was slightly troubled at the odd presence of a device displaying an image of the A.I. right in their path.

Before he could move on and urge the squad forward, with or without the device, he heard the tearing of the door at the front. The massive automaton breaking through would have warranted the aim of his rifle, but he noticed by the familiar signs that it was just Goat, so he pushed his way to the front of the squad to have a better vantage of the large machine.

Though, he was only received by Claire being thrusted into him, which caught him off guard and almost caused him to lose his balance.

"Peke, you mind explaining this behavior?" asked Kokuten in a somewhat strained tone after he regained his posture, a little concerned at the unknown of the situation.

At any other moment, Claire might not have minded having her back pressed into her captain's chest and their hips touching. But what was just taken from her overrode all of her usual thoughts. Pushing herself off of Kokuten, she drew her rifle again, stepping off to the side opposite of Deacon in the interest of trying to spread out.

With the muzzle aimed at what she assumed was it's head, she growled out an unusually angry demand, "Give Kess back... NOW!" She truly doubted the hulking automation would listen, but maybe with it's master not too far behind her she wouldn't have to fire her weapon.

Blake's mind went the same way as Claire's did when she being shoved into Kokuten resulted in Kokuten being shoved into him in an effect akin to domino's falling. He made a brief noise of amusement despite the situation at the relatively amusing situation that had befallen him. No doubt it was far more socially acceptable to be Kokuten up against Claire that it was to be Blake up against Kokuten. He snapped out of his thoughts before they got any more dangerous or sexually exploratory and raised his HHG over Kokuten's shoulder while moving past him and standing alongside Claire.

"Yeah!" he cheered, "Whatever you are put whatever is going on to rest!"

As an aside he apologized to the people in he squad around him: "Sorry, I'm new. Pointers later would be appreciated."

"FU-" PTANG!

Noboru turned so quickly that he swore he got whiplash. His first reaction when he saw an ubermassive metal thing staring the crew down was to pull the trigger on his serviceman's pistol when it got anywhere in the viscinity of the ubermassive metal thing staring the crew down. So that's exactly what he did. The ptang! sound was the sound of a bullet ricocheting off the wall of the tram and through the cieling at high velocity.

The room filled with the scent of weapons discharge, and the light, wispy contrails of smoke rising from the .45's barrel immediately placed the blame on Noboru. So the Yamataian immediately lowered his gun to hip level. He was glad his helmet was on and the visor was polarised, because his face was a mix of disturbed horror and glowing red cheeks of embarassment.

As Claire slammed into Kokuten, Stovaa drew his pistol and levelled it at Goat. He knew he'd never be able to draw his rifle, Peke was probably using it as a foot rest.

"Er, Administrator Peke, why is your robot eating that sav-tech? Please don't say 'I don't know, he's never done this before, he's a good boy,' because that'd mean he's infected like the junkers on the roof, which would mean we'd need to shut him down." Stovaa paused for dramatic effect and flicked off the safety. "And I don't have a boot disc to hand..."

He looked Goat up and down, quickly realising the robot was an imposing for. "Why did I have to be right..." he thought to himself, cursing his own forethought.

At the scraping sound, Deacon had turned his head to tell the squad about it, but in so doing, he also took his eyes of the situation, and when Goat moved forward to take Kess back from Claire, tossing the woman into the rest of the squad, an arm had hit the Kohanian in the shoulder, spinning him into the aisle, and nearly getting him shot in the temple when Noburo fired his shot.

But the gods had been with him and instead of piercing flesh, the round missed his forehead and thankfully didn't ricochet back into the squad. When all the action had unfolded, Deacon slowly got himself up off the floor and turned to face the large automata. Canting his head a little to the side, the hyena took in the situation and one question immediately came to his head along the same lines as Stovaa's.

"Mistress Peke? I have a question, what could have changed your friend, if indeed it turns out that this is not normal behaviour for him? I know very little of your kind, so I am not sure if it could be something effecting his insides, or if maybe he just got tired of being pushed around and doing the dirty work."

Deacon, having dealt with predators before, did not raise his rifle, but it was held tightly within his hand should he need to use it at a moments notice. His eyes were trained on the Freespacer machine, muscles tensed to make a dive to either side.

"Goat, you big dope!" Peke flailed her arms around frantically, nearly falling off of Stovaa's shoulders on more than one occasion. "Put Kess down and GET OVER HERE!" The large Automata emitted another sawblade/steam hiss sound, his single-eyed face spinning around with the noise. Peke, for some strange reason, seemed to understand Goat's strange sounds perfectly, and she wasn't happy. "Whaddya mean you can't?! GOAT, GET-"

Goat didn't seem to be one to take kindly to Peke's yelling. Gripping the top edges of the open doorway, the automata hoisted himself up and out of the engineering car, his heavy feet stomping onto the metal roof with resounding thuds. The noise, as well as some small indents, began to make their way above Squad 35, heading towards the rear cars. Method, if she were still on top of the tram, would see the large Automata quickly shortening the ground between them.

"GOAT?!" Peke screamed again as her partner ran. She was a little stressed, being hassled by all of the others while her companion was ignoring her orders. "Grrr...I dunno! It's not like he's programmed to ALWAYS listen to me. I dunno what he's doing! He's not malfunctioning; I can understand him fine!"

Seeing how Peke couldn't seem to control her friend put Kokuten in a state of unease. The large mountable robot appeared to have underlying reason in not handing over the hologram. The Captain, however, could only watch as Goat tore out and onto the top of the Tram. The indentions made in the wall, only served to occupy his attention for a short moment. The priority here, was the front tram's controls.

"Time is short!" Kokuten looked forward towards the exit Goat took, to the next car. He thrust a finger towards their objective. "We need to move up and secure the front car and stop this runaway catastrophe! Claire, Deacon, we've got point, let's go!"

With that, Kokuten charged ahead, a new urgency following his footsteps. The unexplained appearance of Goat and Kess only served to fuel his anxiety, but he felt it best to simply keep the main objective as a focus.