RP: ISC Phoenix [Interlude 5] - The Making Of

Smith stood there, silently. There was little expression on her face, save for reddened cheeks. And there was also the fact that both fists were clenched quite tightly as well. Still, Smith listened to the others of the crew speak, explaining what was going on. They were hitting a gang and planning to wipe it out. Luca had some weird new device right out of the comics. Speaking of which, she turned to look at Luca.

"Mr. Pavone...it pains me to ask you this but - " Smith spoke in clipped tones, " - Is there enough time for me to change clothes and...go shopping?"

"I think I need new shoes." She explained.

Smith was a woman now? How many more damnable distractions could arise, hm!? The Elysian was quickly tiring of this little game where everyone either teased Smith about his recent gender swap, or mildly suggested they waste even more time trying to fix it as a group. After a silent sigh, he suggested, "Perhaps Zeta ought to take Smith to be properly fitted while the rest of us complete our preparations and get into place. No need to tangle up the whole operation."

"He won't need that, I don't think," a sultry voice purred.

There were more bootsteps on pavement, a soft crunch-crunch of hard rubber heels into the gravely broken concrete. Naoko sauntered into the conversation from somewhere, stage left, having come out of a nearby alley.

Yes, sauntered.

She was wearing a bodysuit that, while it might at one point have fit snugly, now clung in a state of mild disrepair. It was dirty, bloody, ripped in places; she had half unzipped it to make room for a sudden excess of cleavage. It wasn't the only physical change; there were other subtle differences, all of them overtly sexual. It wasn't just a Neko; it was a neko out of some pimply teenager's wet dream.

The NH-17 had been inhaling the same shit as Smith had, apparently.

Somewhere, the Neko had picked up a black dufflebag; she held it over her shoulder, and it bumped around and squeaked in a high pitched keening that was just barely audible on the edge of most of their hearings.

"It will wear off when his body comes around, yo."

"Whoa," Luca said as he watched Naoko walk in, "You're a Yamataian teenager's wet dream on legs. He then looked at Mr. Smith up and down and frowned, "You know, I'm less worried about his body recovering, and more concerned about his mind."

He then gave Smith a nod, "C'mon Smith, if we can't reverse this in a hurry, I suppose we'll work around it. Besides," He threw his hands up and gave Uriel a nod, "Its all just cosmetic, really. Boobs or not, you can still haul arse when it counts. With that in mind..." He held up his right hand, which had the new-fangled Grapple Stunner running up it.

"This is two things. It is an honest-to-Chiharu grappling hook, and it is also an electrical stun gun," He grinned as he made the piton open and close menacingly with an override function, "I figured a bit of multi tasking was in order."

All that needed to be done now was to wait for Smith and Naoko to get themselves together, "Naoko, you have to gear up too. I'll give you the brief: We're going to level a gang that's been terrorising and tearing apart families in an entire district sheerly for kicks. And before you ask why we're doing this,"

He made a dramatic pause to think of an adequate justification, but came up empty handed, "To be frank, I'm in this for kicks too. Uriel has other reasons though." All Luca really understood of Uriel's call to combat the Zeroes was the simple fact that they broke one man, one single man and pushed him over the edge into despair. If that's enough reason to exact revenge in Uriel's mind, Luca figured that it was a reasonable enough justification to hurt someone without losing sleep.

All Luca simply wanted was to have a day where he could just sit back and not worry about being shot at, backstabbed or usurped. Even something as simple and innocent as going to the movies with a few friends was violently dashed and Luca was pissed about it. Something needed to get hurt - and if there were a few inexcusably evil gang bangers on hand to kill, nobody was going to miss them anyway.

He gave a nod to Zeta to give her the clear to take Smith with her when he/she/it was ready to go and meet Beta, "Oh, and Zeta," Luca said, "Tell Beta I say hi, and that we'll meet up when we storm the stronghold, in all likelihood."

Robert looked between Mrs. Smith and Naoko. "Uh, hah. I'm not even sure I want to know what you two have been up too." he checked over his armor making sure it was put on right and was nice and tight.

One might say that, in order to make up for brawn, one would have much in the brain department. One might continue, stating that in order to make up for the lack of brawn, the brains would develop a way to circumvent circumstances in which brawn is required. But then, in Seiren's case, one would be horribly, horribly, wrong.

From the other side of the bay the others were in, a silver-painted LEAF mecha with teal detail and several stickers of a blue cat rolled on down to the throng, stopping a good ten feet away from the others. Who else but the young inventor then poked his head out of the modified machine, greeting Luca with a wave of its arm.

"So, I see you've got the grappler, nice!" He said with a grin, disembarking from the mecha. With a proud smile, he began, "Let me tell you, modifying this was hard - and probably not very legal! Still, I got my Mancannon integrated into the arm! I bet that Origin guy would be mad, huh?"

Little did the short one know that Smith was just a few yards away, albeit a bit more top-heavy than he was before.

Nobody.

Absolutely nobody here, knew what it was like. The inner turmoil that she felt was kept on the down low however. Smith had kept somewhat quiet, but finally sighed and looked to Zeta. "Fine. L-let's just get this over with, ok?" the Ori-Rep half pouted. 'Fffff...No. Just...just no! I didn't mean for it to sound like that! NO!'

Smith hated the Tsundere characters on the kids shows her younger siblings watched. And she just happened to sound and most likely look just like one of them. She then quickly turned her gaze upon Seirin and the LEAF mech.

"Oh? What not-very-legal mods?" the woman asked with a sinister smile.

Zeta lighted a ciggarete and typed in her communicator. "Okay skipper, I told Beta to expect us with two hours. I also said hello for you. Now me and Smithy will do very quicky shopping, then we can go. Enzo and Uriel could go in advance to chekc the place out." She said to captan and put her jacket on.

"Okay Smithy, ready when you are." Zeta said to Origin representative turned woman.

Uriel simply folded his arms over his chest and became silent. Even Luca didn't get it, and the Archangel had explained it. That fact was more than perturbing- it was alarming. He wanted to shout, "What don't you get? How do you not understand!?"

Hisshana shut down those thoughts when he realized they coursed through his mind in Elysian; he was too angry to even keep himself in the local language of choice. But when all would be said and done, Luca Pavone could expect a lengthy and grueling discussion- or argument, depending on his reaction.

For now, he had nothing to offer but a solemn face and silence.

Enzo took a sidelong glance over to Zeta. She thought it might be a good idea for the most virtuous person on the crew to partner up with the local evil-doer and head out to smite together in advance. He nodded along with the idea.

"Sounds good enuffs to me." He said. Really, he couldn't see the issue. Obviously Uriel had his misgivings about Enzo, so what better way to bond then for them to do some mutually satisfying killing? Even if it was in the name of different causes. At least, that was Enzo's point-of view.

"C'mon, Birdback, let's yous and the Space Urchin here heads out on the town," he began, crossing his arms to mirror Uriel's look, "We can party up a storm and softens up the joint for everyone else, yeah? An' I'll show yous it ain't a lack o' respect on my part. Jus' a little good natured needling, see?"

Zeta looked at Enzo while she waited for Smithy. "I said check out. As in scout it! If you 'soften' them it will just tip them of. Just watch and we will then hit them full force with Beta and his people. Also I picked you and Uriel, since Angel is eager to ger to place and be useful and you are onle one who is not in full armour. Otherwise I would ask Rob and Uriel." She explained herself.

Robert rapped his armor chestplate with one armored hand. "I'd be kinda conspicuous, there Enzie." he chuckled. "I'll go with you two Zeta, I've been meaning to talk to Smith about an idea that I had for my armor."

"I'm armed," Naoko noted, slinging the SmAR around to her front so that Luca could see it. Like the rest of her attire, she had relaxed the strap as well, and it dangled from the same shoulder as the duffle bag.

The duffle bag itself squirmed more violently, and she unslung it just in time to avoid being pierced by a very small needle that lanced, rather violently and repeatedly, through the canvas where it had been pressing against her side a few moments before. It made small, vicious, gleeful sounds of victory until Naoko held it out at arms length and shook it, which produced a few watery garbled sounds and absurd fish sucking noises instead, and silence followed. At least, momentarily.

The picture of busty nonchalance, however, Naoko took her customary place beside Luca as if the peculiar display hadn't happened, giving him a patient smile, full and beautiful.

"Anou, just how much time do we have?"

Luca raised an eyebrow at Naoko's artful dodging of the parasite and answered promptly, "Ideally, we have all the time in the world, but I'd like to constrain it to one evening. We don't want to be caught after curfew, furthermore, what the hell is that?" He looked at the parasite in Naoko's hands and blinked before making a step to the side, "Now, I might acknowledge that I'm a bit crazy from time to time, but this is just insane."

John walked in, "Hey guys, what's going ooOOOOHHLYSHIT!" After seeing the parasite writhing about in Naoko's grasp, John made an about face and immediately went back the way he came.

"Smith, did you and Naoko buy this off of a black market or something?" He looked it up and down quizzically, having not seen an infantile NMX before, "Is it house trained, at least? I don't want any of us having our brains turned into mush in the middle of the night!"

Then he realised what she might have meant by 'armed', "Are you going to weaponise that? That's just cruel, even by my standards for taking on these gang bangers!"

John peeked his head around a corner with a rifle in his hands, not wishing to risk his life and limb, or so he assumed. He was too scared to lift the rifle and even aim properly, "Even Luca is terrified by this, and that's terrible!"
"Thank you for pointing the obvious out to the reader," Luca tapped the side of his head while giving a withering look in John's direction.

Of course, nobody knew who or what he was referring to, "Bah. Naoko, just leave that... thing... in an impervious durandium cradle with some of yesterday's uncooked steaks or something, I dunno. You aren't taking it with us," For one of the few and far between moments of his life, Luca was positively flabbergasted.

Zeta was waiting for Smithy to finish up her bussiness with Seiren when she noticed Naoko's duffle bag squirm. It also squeeked and some thin sharp and pointy pierced.

"Bloody hell full of wankers and bollocks!" She shouted looking at it. "What in bloody hell is in that bag?" SHe then said poinint at it. "I hope you just did not bring some squid monster here!" Her hand rested on the handle of her large revolver ready to shoot the duffle bag and what was in it.

CadetNewb said:

"Oh? What not-very-legal mods?" the woman asked with a sinister smile.

Click to expand...

"Oh, you know, attatching an aether generator to the back, completely modifying an arm to be a gun and an auto-threader for bullets," Seiren half bragged to the woman, clearly not caring that she was unfamiliar. His attention was soon drawn to the rather Neko up ahead, that appeared to be carrying. . . something in her bag. He didn't really bother asking what was in it, however, considering that Zeta had that covered.

Misshu? Brought onto the ship? To think Uriel had long since decided her a trustworthy colleague, and now this. Unlike the hesitance of the others, he drew his gun, but kept it low. "If that is a Misshu, I'm killing it here and now," he declared.

What idiocy! Bringing a mind-controlling parasite aboard a ship with this many crew members? It could EASILY start another epidemic!

Naoko cleared her throat, vaguely.

"It's Smith's," she explained, as if that were the answer to all possible inquiries.

The implications were phenominally disturbing.

Zeta froze in space looking at Naoko with mouth wide open. As if her jaw should fall of any second. Her face had Disbelief and Condusion writenn all over it. It took her several seconds until she tamed her chaing of thought and managed to half-say, half shout one word. "WHAT?!"

The woman in the tattered and scorched business suit simply stared at Serin with a stern expression. "If you get caught using this Seirin, you're probably going to end up done for." Smith pointed out to the engineer in an almost gravely voice. When the Baby Mishhu was brought up however, Smith merely continued to speak in a businesslike tone. "I thought we agreed he was ours, but since you're abandoning him, fine. I'll take care of him then." She spoke smugly, snatching the bag from the Neko's grip and tying the end into a knot.

However, as Smith looked at everybody's expressions, the previously unnoticed implication became clear to her in all its terror. The woman simply stood there silently for a moment, lips quavering and cheeks growing all the more red. "IT'S N-NOT WHAT IT SOUNDS L-LIKE!" Smith's voice finally leaped out into a feverish pitch as she recoiled back, hands held close to her body as though cringing. "H-He's, he's just..." Her voice died in her throat.

"I'M IN DESPAIR!" Smith dropped to her knees and cried out, fists shaking at the heavens as the bag swung about.