RP: YSS Kaiyō Mission Fifteen: Harae

Bathhouse

Klaus has had some peculiar events, but slamming into a force field face first was a new one. As he snarled under his breath, he tentatively reached out to feel the force field. It didn't seem to hurt him, but it could resist him and the strength of the Mindy. "No good", he thought. "I better warn the others."

But before he could do anything, in came Boss. Kaiyo's MEGAMI was holding a locker to him as she came through the force field's threshold.

He took the locker out of her hands. "What's this going to do?" he asked.

Bathhouse

Boss looked to Klaus, "It will finish the story."

She walked with Klaus towards where most of the Kaiyō crew members were congregated and opened a locker, then nodded to Klaus to do the same after looking up from its contents. "Teien Eden and Taiyou Hoshi-chusa bought these a bit ago with the intention of recreation, but today we will use them in mission."

Then, telepathically, Boss transmitted the next series of orders and an info packet on the gear in the lockers as well as the epic's last few sections.

"Within these lockers are laser tag items for recreational purposes from Galactic Horizon. The last few sections of Harpy Ornis' epic contained a battle scene that tied together the book's plot elements and resolved its turmoil by leaving Harpy to reign freely over many realms. The bathhouse she retired to in her story held these civilians, but the bathhouse was threatened by demon spawn that were killed by some of Harpy's forces that responded to a plea from her. The people in this bathhouse should believe that they we are using live ammunition and, so, avoiding the bathing civilians is of importance when discharging these weapons.

"The captain believes that with the arrival of Harpy's forces, us, we will instigate this conflict and the demon spawn of Harpy's making will arrive shortly after we have geared up. We are still in Mindy, still able to shoot and kill, but there seems to be something stopping the aliens that possibly killed the majority of the YSS Akagi's crew from doing so now, to us. We are working blind, here, so if the laser tag gear doesn't work, you are authorized to use Mindy weaponry, but it is likely that any enemies that show up are merely an illusion created for our benefit. Fulfilling this illusion should release the illusion. When that happens, if that happens, returning to our ship for decon protocols is advisable."

Once her info had been sent, Boss bent to look into a locker. She picked up a laser tag assault rifle and removed the sight post in a single motion before flipping it about to accustom herself to the weight, then moved on to adding some Eclipse Gear to her spritely person.

Bathhouse

Klaus couldn't help but sweatdrop at this turn of events. The solution to this horror like scenario is laser tag? "Gramps wasn't kidding around. In the Star Army you go all out on the crazy."

He procured one of the lockers for a weapon and removed a laser tag assault rifle. Klaus turned to the rest of the crew and put on a gruff voice. "You heard the lady! Lock and Load." He cocked the rifle. He felt pretty badass.

Planet Surface
Bathhouse Interior
Floor 2

Elenor quirked an eyebrow inside her armor, glanced back at Alastair. "So, any report from the team downstairs yet? Seems awfully quiet." She said, continuing to keep her LASR at the ready pointed at the only door in or out. She'd heard him instruct the team downstairs to have someone try and exit the bathhouse, but so far, that was all they'd heard. Could whoever it was that tried be hurt? Hard to tell with the silence.

Planet Surface
Bathhouse Interior
Floor 2

"Lets head downstairs everyone on the second floor. Sounds like we have some sad laser tag we need to play in order to get out of this place." He said over the comm link to the team. He did not really understand all the details but if it meant they could leave without blowing a hole in this place then it was worth a try. He grabbed up his things and headed downstairs.

Floor 1
He quickly made his way over to were the rest of the team had setup. He wasted no time to grab up two laser tag rifles. Figured if he was going to do this he might as well have some fun with it. He tossed them both into the air and grabbed the pump stock and cocked the weapon. "Lets lock and load. We have a show to put on." He shouted out over comms, a big smile crossing his face. The drones received the signal to lower power to stun. Figured a wild card in the mix would give his team some extra practice.

Bathhouse
Floor 1

"Visuals!" Hoshi called out to the Kaiyō II crew that had feet on the ground. The duress of the situation had grown a hundredfold as the crew took up arms, made apparent in peripherals and fleeting glances, at first, even with 360 degree coverage that the Mindy afforded. A blood and hemosynth curdling scream raised slowly and continued unperturbed for too long from Agatha, the elderly winged woman near the crew. Her pointed finger was aimed at the whisp of a black shadow as it became nothingness. The lowered as she stumbled backwards, falling onto her bum as she found a fetal position and shielded herself with a large swathe of her white feathers. Others were in the same state of confused fear as she was, hiding or running aimlessly. When they went to other rooms, they were either pushed back by other fearful winged people coming into this one or saw for themselves that other rooms had these phenomena. The source of Agatha's now-muffled screaming was above her, above some of the crew, and were swooping through the high ceiling and dewy walls.

"That's the enemy the SAoY Elysian wrote. You have orders!" Hoshi's voice reminded her crew in their comms. The enemy was seemingly, seamlessly untethered to the physical plane that the crew knew all too well, moving like horrific mirages above the crew and Elysians. The shadowy forms seemed to act of their own accord. Some were long, spreading like tendrils from one part of the room's ceilings to another while some would occupy a small area in a translucent black mass that was larger than most 33a and loomed, limbless but with a distinct dome on top, such as what a humanoid had. They then extended themselves with a barely tangible line of billowing shadow many dozen meters in a direction before their full form of murky ink, chiffon-like as it still undulated around space, ever-moving.

Boss was quick to act, aiming and targeting a wispy shadow as it unfurled and undulated. She fired a quick succession of infrared shots the moment the form was extended, targeting a web-like string of hazy blackness. After the soundcard's 'peow!' emitted from her gun, the line of shadow scuttled quickly to either side- where the shadow form was going and where it had been. Her head turned the opposite direction of her next shot, which had targeted the smaller mass of the diaphanous darkness that had been at one end of the cord of twilight. When her shot landed, another scream could be heard while the lightlessness evanesced and was soon gone. The sound was far removed from the vociferated cry that had come from Agatha as it changed pitch and reverberated in the room before it was over, long after the small piece of darkness was eradicated. Where Boss was now looking was the larger mass of the black, smoke-like form which had been extending itself. She pulled her trigger successively as the looming mass elongated itself directly to her. Boss hopped back and into the air just as the peow sounds of her soundcard were drowned out by the death scream of the large mass, which was akin to a long, thin sheet of metal being shakily ripped.

"That's how it's done!" Boss said, "Try to KO these things! Remember what they are!"

Planetside
Bathhouse Floor 2

Saya nodded and followed Alistair downstairs. The explanation was a bit strange and frankly, she didn't understand, but at the same time, if it meant they could stop something bad from happening without killing anyone, she was in.

Bathhouse floor 1
As they got down to the first floor and armed themselves, Saya stayed back a bit and did her best to stay out of the way. She made sure to keep an eye out for any enemies, any of the shadows, that would get to close to the civilians and take shots at them.

Bathhouse
Floor 1

Alastair had seen enough movies involving tendrils to know where this was heading too. Not on his watch would he allow his crew to become tendril bait in this twisted story. There was going to be only one route to this story and would be the happy ending. There would be no bad ending for this story that honestly left him completely in the dark about what was really going on. Now he had to deal with shadow tendrils monsters and all the angels in this place freaking out because of it. Once again he was in a situation that required saving people in distress and was glad to be a part of that story.

Alastair reached down and grabbed up more laser rifles. He reached into his pack and pulled out one of the blocks of explosives. He took a small piece of it and covered the trigger of the weapon in the fire position. This was followed by him tossing it into the air. One of his drones caught the gun strap by the nose and started to fly around. He did this three more times. The drones started to fly around making it look like a rave party was going down. He started to dart around the area and firing at any shadows that came into sight. There would not be a single shadow that would leave his sight alive. That is if alive is the right word but either way something was getting lasered.

Bathhouse Interior

Ragnar hustled to a locker and hoped against hope. Back home at the mining colony Ragnar, his brother, and their friends had to play with pretend guns or cheap toys. He'd always had his eye on a particular piece of laser tag gear but his mother was a frugal spender and spent more time ensuring her kids lived well and had their needs tended; no time to waste hundreds of KS on trivial wants.

It appeared he was in luck and couldn't help himself but say "Oh come to papa..." over the comm line he forgot to close. Slinging the extra equipment over his mindy, swiping a set up the armor to stuff in his pack, he grabbed the real prize and gave the barrels a whirl. "Even Horizon IR minigun. The bad daddy of the sport." Armed with the laser weapon that slew demons (if by appearance alone) Ragnar rushed with a childish glee towards what he hoped was a sizeable group of the evil things.

Catching a large group of shadowy spookiness making its way towards the throng of civvies, Ragnar couldn't contain his excitement any longer. Bracing in a broad stance, anticipating the simulated recoil to be as awesome as he had dreamed about countless times before; the large medic let out a "Whoooooo!" to match the soundcards "Brrrrrrrrrpt" as he unloaded into the shadowy mass. Now he had no idea how many of the things had been knocked out of the fight or how many had opted for a different approach that didn't involve a muscled bound, power armored manchild cackling with glee and armed with a minigun; but Ragnar was having the best day of his life at the moment. Rather than hole up, he wanted to keep the party going.

Ragnar began prowling the halls and hunting for more opportunities to use his newest and favoritest toy. "I've never been as happy as I am in this moment!" he announced to the ground team.

Planetside
Bathhouse
Floor 2

Elenor wasn't sure what had prompted the guy running the show down here to sprint down the stairs, but she only spared the medic a glance before following her down as well, weapon at the ready. Either something was going very wrong, or things were about to get a lot weirder than they already were.

Bathhouse
Floor 1

Of course, once she'd regrouped with everyone, and saw the crate with laser tag kit in it, she realized that weird was likely about as apt a answer as she was going to get. Nonetheless, she reached in, grabbing ahold of one of the rifles even as she slung her LASR onto the weapon mount point on her armor, and was busy checking over her 'new weapon' when the masses of shadows began to appear. Dropping to a knee and raising the weapon in muscle memory instinct, she sighted as best she could with the weapon before firing.

Her last time dealing with anything like this was using training weapons for large unit exercises, but most of that was just modified issued weapons, not this, fake stuff. Nonetheless, it was apparently proving quite effective against whatever these things were, though Elenor was fairly certain her aiming for what might have been vital points were probably not working out well, since far too many of the things seemed to skitter away after getting hit.

/end