RP: YSS Miharu Mission 4: The Fame and the Fury

Nothing like some exercise to keep the mind focused. Although a good fight would have been better. Nyton thought to himself as he stretched out.

Nyton was dressed in his workout clothes and had spent some time in the small gym of the recreation area. Grabbing a towel he began to wipe off some sweat from his face. It's been some time since I was able to work out like this.

Quickly checking on the time and everyone else's activities he then decided to follow through on some of his other duties. With the new recruits still working hard on Masako's simulation he was still free to attend to other things. Wasting little time he quickly moved to shower and change.

Once Nyton was done he was back in his uniform, impeccably dressed as usual. Now he was ready to continue in his duties. With a steady pace he began to walk towards Heram Wazu's room.

Very well then, let's see if our guest needs anything. he thought before ringing the chime to Wazu's room.

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"Pa-feku-to!" exclaimed Akiko with a flourish of success. Shizuka nodded as she looked at their results. The table was well decorated now with many a fancy ribbon and folded napkin. "All we need now are the finishing touches. Excuse me, Miharu-san? I know that my sister and I have not been made members of your crew yet but can you do us a favor and provide us with a little holographic assistance?" the older sister then said.

"I think it's safe to say that you've been added in if you haven't been transfered off," Miharu glibly replied before asking: "What do you need?"

"Really? I thought we had to go through some sort of formal interview or something." Shizuka remarked.

"Wow Masa-chan already made us part of the crew! Yay!" Akiko cheered. "Miharu-chan I can't wait to upload all my celebration ideas!"

Shizuka chuckled a bit. "One thing at a time, Akiko-chan." the elder sister said before returning to work. "We want to perform our magical animal act and we need your assistance. Here, let me draw it up for you." With a few waves of her hands the neko began drawing up a simulation. A small holographic curtain formed that surrounded the table. The curtains were suspended in the air by themselves until Shizuka drew her finger across it 'opening' them. As the curtains opened a multitude of cranes were revealed and began to take flight. As the cranes flew up they fragmented into shards of light that scattered and began to fall down like leaves around the table. During this event a gentle harp trill was heard.

"This is just a simple holographic act, one of several that we used to perform for certain meals and events. If you could assist us by providing the holographics and music, we would be very appreciative." Shizuka said.

"Yeah and we change outfits too using our own holographics in time with it." Aikiko added.

"I won't say I'm a great connoisseur of art," Miharu began as a reply to the sisters. "But I think that if you'd want to perform such acts, you really should try to get in touch with Tom Freeman, our engineer and the one whom has been doing caretaker duties so far on this ship. I recall that he considers himself quite the thespian so I'm sure he'll be interested in what the two of you would like to cook up."

Akiko beamed and grabbed hold of Shizuka's hands, hopping up and down excitedly. "Did you hear that Onee-chan? Free-chan will like our shows!"

As her sister hopped about Shizuka smiled slightly. "That is encouraging to hear. Where may Freeman-san happen to be right now? Is he currently occupied?"

"He's about to go on a spacewalk," Miharu supplied for an answer. "I doubt he has time right now, but you could always send him a written note. I'm positive he'll look forward to your idea. He's that kind of person."

Wazu replied with a simple “Come in!” in Nepleslian. At this point everything that had been helping to keep him awake for the past few days had drained out of his system. The double punch of pain and fatigue leaving him sprawled out ontop of the bed, leaving him plenty of time to think.

~What was it Phalanx Philp said? Pain lets you know you’re still human? … or was it Nepleslian? ~ He knew it was some kind of ‘fleshy’, possibly even Yamataian but he wondered if they could still feel real pain or if it was Phalanx Philp that said it… One way or another he was going to get some more mechanical bits installed when he got back.

“So what does your crew do for fun?” Wazu asked as the door opened.

"Can I? Yes. Do I? Not all that often. Space has a strange lack of large bodies of water, and our Town wasn't near any swimmable bodies of water, but I did swim every once in a while. Never down a waterfall, if that's what you're asking." Kai answered, chuckling. He was a little confused at where the question came from, but, in response to it, he flipped the page, and began drawing a river scene, a shallow, rushing river speeding past rocks and the likes, lined with trees to either side. a Building on one side of the stream suggested it was another view of the resort village, and eventually, a waterfall in the background confirmed it. Aided by his near-perfect Yamataian memory, Kai was drawing quickly and neatly, with just enough artistic flare to give it a living quality.

"And you? would you like to swim? I'm sure you're naturally a good swimmer, even if you don't encounter large bodies of water often." Kai grinned at the sprite, stopping partway through the drawing to stretch his arms and crack his knuckles a bit, resting from the repeated movements.


******

Lackadaisically, the sprite slouched against the chair back, crossing her legs and dipping her head so that it was nearer to the shoulder of the armor pilot. Unconcerned with proximity, the engineer was instead lazily regarding the illustration, enveloped in her own thoughts. She wasn't sure why she had asked about swimming; it had just seemed to be the thing to say, at the time. Now, posed with the same question
reversed, it gave Yuzuki something to mull over. Swimming. Could she do it?

Theoretically, she could. After all, she bathed fairly regularly, and swimming, reasoned the sprite, must be something similar. Sure there was more water in the mix, and it would be a lot colder than she normally liked, but that might not be such a bad thing and if the chance ever presented itself, she was pretty sure she would take it.

"Maybe someday," Yuzuki answered, "Dunno how it works, though."

Speaking of work, she thought reflexively, before continuing aloud, "Anyway, I should get back to the armor bay. We just left the stuff sitting out there. If Freeman-Juni sees it, there will probably
be trouble, so at least I need to clean it all up."

She eased off the back of the chair, massaging a crick in her neck when she had drawn up fully. It popped, quietly, and she sighed wearily afterward. Yuzuki really didn't want to go back to work. She did, but she didn't at the same time - what she really wanted to do was stay here and watch Kai draw, or to take the break that he suggested. The art was fascinating.

"Thanks for showing me this stuff. Ah... I'll show you something nice later, Okay? It's all complicated, but it's really not once you get the hang of it. You might like it."

"Really? Free-chan sounds nice!" Akiko replied before starting to type. "Hmmmm.... let's see. What should I write?"

"It would help if we knew his rank first." Shizuka said as she checked the Miharu logs. "Ah he is a Santo Juni. Well then you need to be very respectful, Aikiko-chan."

"Hai onee-chan!" Akiko replied as she typed away a message.

"Ah, wait let me see-" Shizuka began to say but was too late. Akiko already finished and sent it off. "Akiko-chan, you forgot to let me proof read it."

"Eh? Why?" Akiko asked oblivious.

"Nevermind. It can't be helped now I suppose." Shizuka said with a shrug.

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Nyton entered Heram's room and studied the man. To Nyton the Nepleslian seemed to be in some sort of pain. Must be withdrawal from those stimulants he was using. he thought.

"Are you certain you feel well enough for fun? You seem a bit under the weather, Mr. Wazu." the man asked, a neutral look on his face.

Wazu let out a deep breath as he thought about how to respond.

“I’ll live.”

He would then turn, letting his legs drop off the side of the bed as he sat up. He was still wearing the clothing that had last been provided to him and hadn’t touched anything in the room sense Nyton last looked in.

“This room is nice, but without my datapad I can not do work and the computer terminal here merely contains…. Images.” There was a slightly sick tone in his voice when Wazu said ‘images’. He had seen some disturbing images before, but those were by far the worst.

“I doubt you will let me out of here regardless, but I might as well ask.”

Mean sim operator said:

Meanwhile, the Powered Armor flew up the Main Passageway and to the upper deck of the Miharu. An explosion above would signify their attempt to destroy the Graviton Barrier guarding the exit. But the Armor Team would have other things to worry about as the Nekomachina finally landed outside the Graviton Barrier of Engineering. There, they aimed their rifles and proceeded to fire upon the Barrier in an attempt to destroy it.

Click to expand...

Yukari was out of fancy tricks. She ordered the defenders and her team to retreat to the starboard damage control room and prepare to defend themselves. She activated one of her forearm shields and set her other forearm weapon to fire a wide-arc aether beam that would, with luck, slice all five of the enemy armors into two pieces before she was killed.

If not, she hoped it would give the defenders and her team time to reach cover.

"That's not a bad start," Takuma noted.

"Files that are always there... There should be some similar files in the system directory of their drive we could look at. I'm sure we could look up a couple files on our system and look for their equivalent on their hard drive." Takuma looked around on his computer and found a few files that could make likely candidates.

"This should give us a target or at least a confirmation," Takuma said. "Based on the algorithm and encryption knowledge we know about the drive, Miharu, is it possible to test every possibility at this point, or do we need to narrow it down further?"

"Could could always start with finding the data that would match the nekomachina specs, those music files, or the deckplans of the outpost," Miharu suggested. "Once you have matches for that, decrypting the rest of the coding is going to be - at the very worst - time consuming. I'd recommend a keyword search from there to find points of interests and decrypt those sections. Decrypting select files of information ought to be much faster."

"Of course, you'll need to decide on what you're actually looking to find in there," the ship's AI amended.

"Well you could at least refresh yourself. Would you like to use the bathing facilities, perhaps?" Nyton then asked, shifting his stance to continue observing Wazu. "Maybe a change of clothes even?"

"Stick with the music files for a start." Miyoko nodded to the disembodied voice of the Miharu. "I suspect those will be the smallest of the options you named."

She pursed her lips thoughtfully for a few moments before adding, "As for our priorities, well, it's a bit hard to know what we want until we know what's on there. After we have enough of a handle to start decrypting segments, I'd like to make the metadata our first priority--it shouldn't be very time-consuming compared to the actual information, and having some idea of what we have to work with would be helpful." Miyoko leaned back in her chair, relaxing a bit now that the brunt of the thinking seemed to be out of the way. "I'd also like a full-datacore search on any references to 'Amaya's Gate.' Beyond that... well, I'll wait to see what the metadata says before making any more decisions. We may need to defer to Suzuka-Shosa. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an intelligence analyst."

Miyoko glanced to Takuma. "Anything you'd like to add?"

“The last set of clothes that was brought by is fine as is this room’s shower. The problem I am having now is passing time. I think this is the first instance where I have nothing to do in at least a month.” He motioned over to his broken datapad beside the computer terminal in the room. “No usable computer systems.”

“Unless you mean the bathing facilities as a means of entertainment.” Wazu added. After all this was a Yamatai ship. “In which case I think I will pass.”

After a quick moment, Tom stripped naked, and walked up to his armor.

He didn't really pay much attention to the fact he was now stark naked as he opened the armor from the outside.

"You know, you'd think that people would have more of a head on their shoulders," he said. "It's basic protocol to not disturb a ship's Taisa."

Nyton just shrugged as he listened to Wazu explain his situation. "Unfortunately there is not much I can offer for entertainment. I could have some movies brought from the recreation area over. You're going to just have to go without a computer for a while longer." he replied.

“If they are worth watching then I have likely seen them already.” He would only pause for a moment before suggesting something else,

“Perhaps a game then?” Wazu would smile a little bit, “Are you a betting man?”

"Depends on the game. We certainly would not be able to play a round of roulette with any sort of firearms." Nyton replied.