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

Deacon was still a little lost in the sight of Kokuten leaping across open air, and leaving him in command of the remainder of the squad. At a single word, he snapped back to reality. That word, was derail.

"Master Stovaa is right. We need to slow things down or the forces will soon overcome those holding us onto the track. Not to mention we're now working against the clock to stop us before we come around again and hit the car Masters Kokuten and Noburo are on."

Looking at the door going forward, then the remaining crew, the Kohanian started to formulate a tentative plan.

"Mistress Serra, what have you learned about this system? I know your expertise so far has been limited to vending machines for the most part, but do you think there is some way to cut power to slow us down?"

Next the cybernetic gaze fell on Blake.

"You, new person, I saw what you did with the crane thingy. What are your thoughts on our situation. Newness is freshness, you're not limited to command structure for right now. I want to hear ideas."

Peke and Stovaa's turn to be called upon.

"Master Stovaa, do you think that if you had to you could get to the underneathy parts? You're the biggest person here, and I would rather not risk a life climbing down off of the back or front to get beneath if we don't have to. And Mistress Peke, I know your people are fond of the robots we've seen. Is there anything you could tell me about what might have attracted so many? What do your little crawler bots like so much about this train? Where could they have all come from?"

To Claire, Deacon couldn't really think of immediate orders. He rubbed at the area right next to his ears, making them wiggle slightly as he tried to think. Why hadn't he been paying more attention to the little things leading up to this.

"Claire, you seem to be the most connected to the people around here. Do you remember if Mimi said anything about radios working in here, or any sort of communication? Perhaps an intercom to a power station, or maybe a big red phone to Cassefin's office that we could ask someone to power us down? Or," Deacon did a slow turn to look at everyone present. "Does anyone have thoughts on if there are any more of those little thingies that Kess was standing on, that Goat took? Could there be more of them to allow the savtechs to be in the train if something like, well, THIS happened?"

The Kohanian was so lost at the moment, but he was going to do his best to save his crew, and friends, lives.

"I should be able to do something once we get into the engineering car." Serra said while watching the passenger cars fall back as the engineering car pulls ahead. "We should get to it fast though."

Blake turned the situation over in his head. On one hand, his idea with the crane cart had caused damage to government property. On the other, it was a good idea... in theory. As encouraged, Blake spoke with confidence, "I suggest that we bring the tram to a gradual halt if and when we find said brakes. We should apply them slowly instead of sharply. Elysian sculptors often spend days on a single feather. I feel we should take the same kind of approach with this tram... Uh..Sir. I think it would provide us as a cushion for the cars behind us if the other team fails to slow down the passenger cars. It could be a little rough, but the alternative fatal crash would be, how do you say it?"

Blake paused for thought before deciding on a good word for the situation, "Unpleasant."

"AAAARHHHGHASHHDFGFH," Method replied to Kokuten's call as he was about to stop the tram. More than getting thrown off, she was concerned with getting chucked by the droid she was clinging to and being stomped on. She hooked her fingers onto the back of the child-seat mounted on top of the giant junker and wrapped her legs around it.

Peke exchanged confused glances between Deacon and Stovaa. "Umm, Errr...there should be a brake at the conductah-booth. I think. And they aren't my junkah drones; I only handle assembly, Goat handles control modules," Peke shook her head vigorously. "Whatever they know, I can't figure it out without Goat."

Serra's assumption about the engineering car was, for the most part, correct. Visible from where the rest of the squad was standing, the Engineering car was simply a couple yards away at the head of their current position. Most of the tram car itself was machinery, but connecting directly to the previous passenger car was a booth housing what appeared to be a control panel, as well as a large computer system. Aside from the control panel, there was also a large handle on the floor near the computer box that clearly read "Emergency Brake".

---

Lenny nodded his enormous head up and down, face still hidden behind his reflective helmet. Immediately, the large ID-SOL began began to mimic Tweak's procedure of removing the delicate coils, effortlessly yanking the devices out from beneath the wrecked tram cars.

George, on the other hand, gave a quick salute, "R-right!" before diving down to his belly to get a better look at the layout. The rails that the trams sped along were slightly suspended up, with ground directly below them exposed to the open air. Sure enough, George could make out large amounts of technical-looking wiring and mechanisms below. Without thinking too much about it, the Nepleslian grabbed a rather thick rubber-coated tube, hefting a length of it out of the crevice. "You need somethin' like this?!" George yelled as he hefted the length of cabling in his arms.

---

As soon as Kokuten pulled the lever, the entire set of passenger cars began to shudder and shake. Those holding on to something would immediately be jerked forward, the emergency brake certainly living up to its name as it violently began to decelerate. The noise of screeching metal grew to an almost unbearable decibel as the brakes activated. Goat, who was in the process of flailing wildly atop the tram, did not have near enough time to find the footing necessary to weather the extreme acceleration change, and was thrown forward as a result. The Automata hit the tram roof once on its back before sliding a couple feet directly off of the roofing, taking Method with him as he feel forward in front of the tram. Luckily, the machine man had enough of a reaction time to reach out and grasp onto the very edge of the separated walkway that used to bridge the two sections of tram.

Goat's lower body, following the sudden change in direction, was thrown beneath the tram and within seconds more terrible grinding metal sounds were being screamed into the tunnel, violent vibrations shaking Method in her mounted carseat. The Automata's lower body was getting caught in the mechanisms beneath the tram, and if its body language was any indication, Goat was very much stuck.

Kokuten's cybernetic arm switched to locking mode when he threw the lever, turning the limb into a solid anchor on ther door. As the train slowed down to a sudden halt, the Captain easily kept himself standing. His worries, however, came from hearing the loud crashing sound above him. Knowing that Method and Goat were still up there, Kokuten's gut twisted in the realization of what may have happened. He opened the squadwide channel.

“The passenger cars have been stopped.” reported Kokuten, a little heave in his breath tellible. He started over to where he had heard the sounds of a stuck Goat. “Deacon, report in when you've stopped your section.” He looked over to Noboru and signaled the man to follow, then hung his head over the side where Goat and Method were.

“Goat! Method! Are you alright?” asked Kokuten, trying to find a way to help.

Hearing his commander's voice reassured Deacon tremendously and set a new track into his mind. He wasn't going this alone, first time command by being through proberbially to the wolves. With a slight nod of his head, and a smirk on his canine lips, he pointed to Claire.

"Claire, you and I are leading the charge. Serra, you and new guy follow close, but leave us some room to maneuver in case we have some uninvited guests. Stovaa, you and Peke keep an eye behind us and let us know if any more of the junkers, or Goat, come to try and stop us."

With the instructions given, the Kohanian again moved to open the door to the next area, smiling with playful chivalry and a bow.

"Ladies first, of course." the large hyena said, giving his friend and squadmate a wink. "Let's move guys, Master Kokuten has gotten his end of the train stopped, and if we don't want to meet up with him again like a scene from a bad Nepleslian porno, we need to get our end stopped so we don't take them from the rear..."

Claire's usual dirty mind was now in active combat with the part of her mind which was actually aware of the current situation. Did Deacon HAVE to word it like that? Or was it simply because he was looking at her? Either train of thought was not going to end well if she allowed it.

Not dying eventually won out in her head, and with her rifle raised, she stepped into the next car as Deacon had instructed her, her geshrin eyes sweeping for any immediate threats as she did so. In the back of her head, she still worried about Kess and to be honest, she didn't trust the rest of the squad to not do anything that would endanger her. This made a small pit in her stomach as she didn't want to think about actually losing her. Nevertheless, such thoughts had to be pushed aside as she did her job.

Kokuten was mostly correct. The rapid deceleration of the passenger cars put a large distance between the two trams, and the speed was getting into a manageable state. However, as the CSS members on the passenger cars began to assess the situation, there came another odd sound beneath the tram. Outside, Goat's lower body was being mangled by bottom part of the tram, and throughout the course of his gruesome situation something must have came loose. One of his massive legs, to be exact, had been twisted from its joint and had clattered down along the tracks. In a troublesome twist of fate, the appendage had jammed itself onto the rail directly in the path of the emergency brake's mechanism. The two collided and nearly ripped the entire braking mechanism out from under the train entirely, taking part of the bottom of the tram car with it.

Kokuten, Method and Noboru could feel the sudden change. Although they were no longer accelerating, the tram was still moving forward at a generous pace with some very worrisome turbulence suddenly rattling upwards from the bottom of the tram. Goat didn't look too happy about any of this; the automata was swinging his single-lensed faceplate around erratically as it tried to grasp its situation.

Subtle vibrations made it down the track to where Tweak was standing, a coil in one hand and looking down at George. She frowned behind her visor and looked down the tunnel.

"Alright, forget subtlety," she muttered. "Hey, if you cut it and it has electricity in it, and if you can get about ten yards of it topside here, it'll help. We need to get moving!"

Taking the heavy coil from Lenny's hands, she pointed at the maintenance car. "Move those. Piece by piece or all at once, it doesn't matter right now, they just need off this track!" Tweak turned and ran over to the side of the tunnel closest to the runaway's track and stood several of the coils up on their edges, leaning against the wall with their broad-sides facing the tracks. Slicing into the wires, she took out a length and then wound it around the coils, attempting to bind them so that when the current was run through them they would act as one large electromagnetic coil instead of the individual coils they really were. Then she took the last few and set them against the car's roof.

"So, are they electrical?" she called down to George.

"I'm fine," Method hollered back up to Kokuten. She winced in sympathetic pain as she watched the automaton's leg being torn off, taking the brake with it. "...but I don't think this thing is! D'you want me to crawl down there and try to fix the brake myself?"

Kokuten grimaced, unnoticeable through his visor, but the feeling was conveyed by the souring color of his green eyes. In a way, he could understand the 'pain' Goat may have been feeling, if automata like him felt it. The Captain tried to get a good look under the tram, attempting to get a decent idea of the damage. It appeared to be severe, but with his experience with machines was mostly limited to Neuro-Mechanical Science, and he didn't see any cybernetic limbs on this train.

"That would be preferable, but do not perform anything risky! I do not want you to harm yourself, only attempt repairs if you believe you can do so safely!" ordered Kokuten.

"SAFETY IS FOR CHUMPS!" screamed Method at the top of her lungs, before she swung joyously down Goat's body like a monkey. She dangled from his underside by her legs, then grabbed onto the tram's undercarriage, hooking her limbs around whatever she could get a hold on.

"Method!" Kokuten yelled after Spacer as she disappeared under the tram. For all of a second, he stared down at Goat, in utter silence. He shook his and sat down, heaving a hefty sigh. With all that was going on, the Nepleslian needed a short break, so he took off his helmet revealing a sweaty matte of combed-back hair. His gunmetal black eyes were letting off a relaxing green glow from their LEDs. The parts where his helmet had hugged to his face were a shaded lightly with red.

"Noboru, how in the world does this happen to us so much?" asked Kokuten running a gloved hand through his sweaty hair. It felt good to breath the air without it going through a filter, but it also felt good to feel the wind on something other than the front of his face.

Noboru's head had slammed into the ladder rung in front of him at high velocity when the train stopped. He was glad for the padded gel layer inside the helmet's lining; otherwise his forehead would have split like an egg. As it were, all that reminded him of the accident was a bright red mark rapidly turning into a bruise, and a headache blossoming in his forehead.

The Yamataian slowly climbed back into the cabin and removed his own helmet, his own face displaying marks similar to Kokuten's own red marks. The Yamataian rubbed at his forehead with a gloved hand, thinking to himself. After a few seconds, he managed a response: "I have no fucking clue, Sarge."

Claire, realizing that Kess was still with the mangled Goat that was steadily growing more distant from them, decided to throw caution to the wind and start slowing down the tram in hopes of getting off soon enough and reaching the damaged AI before that spacer girl did something to enrage the automation and put Kess at risk.

She moved on past Deacon, only giving him a glance for opening the door and not giving the time to smile for the gesture, putting her orders and his comments on a back burner in her mind as she entered the final car. Looking frantically over the controls, she spotted the familiar lever sticking out from the floor which she assumed was the manual brake. Holstering her weapon, she pulled on it the best she could, bracing one foot against the bottom of the control console for leverage. She didn't think it would be an 'accelerate' lever, but she needed to stop the thing NOW.

While Lenny was effortless tossing large scraps of wreckage out of the track, George watched with great curiosity as Tweak set about her own part of the plan. At first, the short Nepleslian wasn't too sure what the neko-in-disguise was doing, but as things progressed George began to realize her plan... with his own twist to the formula, anyway.

"Oh yeah!" George exclaimed in a flash of brilliance. The Nepleslian hefted the cable over to where Tweak was working and, in the spur of the moment, pulled a simple combat knife he kept attached to leg of his suit and sliced the cabling, a crackle and slight shower of sparks escaping from the separation. Were it not for the insulation provided by his CSS suit, the currents would have most likely killed him. Afterward, and without much forethought to it, he immediately pressed the live wires onto the coils.

As Tweak's assembled coils took the charge, the large pieces of tram wreckage, with its own set of oppositely-charged coils still on the underside, began to quickly slide along the ground towards the opposing wall. Lenny, who had his back turned as he threw a large sheet of twisted metal onto the platform, turned only to catch a glimpse of the moving tram as it bumped into him, pushing the ID-SOL towards the platform wall. Lenny, a little spooked by this development, scrambled on top of the scrap and stood atop it, wobbling slightly as the repulsing force pushed it along. As it collided with the wall, Lenny unceremoniously fell backwards and landed on his rump with a loud grunt.

Tweak's plan had worked, for the most part...the path of the oncoming tram was now generally clear, now that the large wreckage was no longer present.

---

As Claire pulled yanked on the emergency brake, the front of the tram experienced an enormous jolt as the tram decelerated. Claire, as well as the others in the front cars, could see several junkers who had been silently camping out on the top and side of the cars fly forward from the sudden change of speed and clatter against the tracks.

However, the sections of tram behind them began to gain... and gain quickly. With Goat leading the charge, the automata turned its head to see the ridge of the front tram cars approaching. The large automata's shoulders heaved and lowered, as if sighing in grim frustration, before using its arms to scratch and scramble at its chest. It took a few precious seconds, but eventually the Automata was able to fish Kess' Savtech unit out of the compartment in his chassis... just in time to hold the unit upward as the back and front ends of the tram met, pincer crushing Goat's body in between as the two units collided.

The two halves of the tram, now connected once more by their opposing forces, quickly slide past Tweak, George and Lenny, who had moved the wreckage just in the nick of time as the transport swooshed by. Luckily, the brakes on the front end of the tram were more reinforced than those of the individual cars, and not long after the front end of the tram had passed the tram station, the runaway tram came to a slow and final stop.

For the first time in the intense hour, there was relative silence and peace.

"Are you alright, Noboru?" asked Kokuten slowly standing from his position on the floor, noticing the considerable physical trauma. However, the Captain did not seem to notice the front Tram was approaching quickly. So, when the two collided, he was sent to the floor, his helmet sent to god knows where. For a few agonizing seconds he felt the tram slow to a stop. In that moment of disorientation he was able to slowly grasp the image of Goat's mechanical arm.

The Captain stumbled to his feet and awkwardly walked over to the grim sight. He winced as he noticed the fact that it was Goat, and also recognized the Savtech device in it's grasp. Even though he was still slightly off from the landing, he attempted to pull Kess from Goat's hand.

"Hng..." Kokuten grunted as he pulled, he mustered up his voice of command, yelling loud enough for anyone in the surrounding area to hear. "Squad 35! Report!"

Tweak wasn't sure what George did, but somehow it worked. He applied a charge, true, but her vision alerted her to a problem just before it was momentarily distorted by the sudden increase in magnetic activity.

Whatever that problem was, the job was done. After the overturned tram car was moved, the neko engineer cleared much of the small debris from the track before the runaway slid by. Tweak was pleased to see that it was slowing down, and scanned the channels to find the one shared by the rest of the team. She then manipulating her radio settings so she could broadcast to the channel she shared with George and Lenny as well as to Team 35.

"Tweak Three Seven reporting in. Everyone alright in there?" She almost asked what happened, but figured that could wait for the debriefing.

Blake awoke for the after being knocked unconscious for the second time in one day. He stirred to the sounds of his commanding officer's voice. With a grunt of pain, Blake lifted himself off of the floor of the tram. He looked around himself in a stupor but couldn't find his radio switch or his gun. Being otherwise unable, he settled for shouting over the deafening silence which had preceded.

"P3C Blake Morris, reporting for duty..." he winced with the last phrase, "Although I may not be fit for duty."