RP: Terraforming Ake [Terraforming Ake] P1 - Dust Bowl Children

"Right, right," Alice replied to Franklin. Everything that man did was extreme. He was like 100% distilled nepleslian with a side of chilly. It was kind of funny really. But it had the effect. Franklin was tough son of a bitch and Alice would knew that it will be fun making him to take medication or god forbid trying to heal him should something happen. When Daziel talk to mr. Fox, Alice regarded the man with a lazy look. She did not like that man at all. Gruff, rough and not caring. Well not caring for anything except his own person at least. Alice thought as much.

When Daziel paused his talk and gave them assignment, Alice took the datapa. "All righ, that won't be trouble. I am not coroner though," Doctor replied with a shrug of her should. She moved and put her duster back on for the walk to med-bay. "Field kit will be no troubl, as for weapons, I have my own rifle. Oh and Mr. Daziel, don't forget to grab a gun when you move out to catch up with us. Something happened to last expedition and until we know what, it would be better to be careful and armed. Hell there might be squids on this planet for all we know."

It was a modified FatCOM, paired with yet another datapad. "Miss October, you shall be the secretary so to speak. This datapad is constantly uploading to Sister Sara as well as being synced with the others, and this FatCOM has a camera built-in. Record everything and monitor the feeds to make sure we're getting a constant stream of data from the site."

Sapphire put the device on and adjusted it to fit snugly. Too bad she couldn't've gotten it sooner. By looking at the face masks that suddenly appeared from their hidden niche. She would rather stay on the ship or wear the bulky space suits. "Huh.. what about the rest of our bodies? Whont we have some protection from the toxins in the air effecting our skin?"

Sapphire pulled the mask off the rack that held her name and was the smallest, unless the little sprite was coming along. Then hers would be the second smallest. She looked up to bring the FatCOM and the Mask problem up to Daziel, but he had already left.

It didn't take her parents long to find out that she had cut them off from her funds. Already they must've raised hell with Origin Terra Org to get this quick of responce. Without access to her brothers' and her paychecks, They had no funds unless one of the three gotten a job.

"Oh well..." She muttered softly as she tried on the mask with the FatCom in place. She got it on with out knocking off the FatCom that was already in place, but the lens kept fogging up when ever she breathed. "Crap!" She muttered as she kept pulling her hair along with the straps to get the mask to seal properly. Only to end up with her hair tangled and caught in the straps. Along with a foggy facemask which kept getting worser as she breathed.

She ripped it off, knocking the FatCOM off her head which she caught easily as the facemask landed on the floor with a clatter. "Owwwa!" As some of her hair went with the straps. "Piece o crap! Who made these?"
Sapphire redid her hair into a much tighter ponytail that hung from a much lower part of her head. She replaced the FatCOM and retried the mask again. This time it fitted much better and the lens didn't fog up when she breathed.

She activated the FatCOM along with the pad she was given and ran a system link tests. Seeing everything was in order and working properly.

"Squids? Whot is that?" Sapphire sounded worried, watching Alice leave the room with the rest. It seamed that Akemi was coming onto her. Franklin...well he was just being a crotchety old man even though his antic reminded her of a distruptive child at times. The others seamed to be lost in their own thoughts. She would place money on Franklin and Akemi if things came to push and shove.

"Squids." Spencer explained to Sapphire as he pulled the straps against the back of his head and pressed his flat-brimmed hat down on top of them, his voice still quite audible despite being muffled by the mask. "... is big floatin' psychic meatballs with slimy spaghetti pokin' out of 'em. They use these spaghetti fingers to play with the dirty parts of catgirls and people an' they gets to layin' eggs in 'em and enslavin' folk with brainwashing and such-- and then they makes their own catgirls. Whooped their slimy asses in the war, we did." While this was a round-about way to put it, and it drew a much friendlier illustration than the one typically given, it was true enough, and there was little more to say about it than that.

At this point, Franklin squinted his eyes for a moment and peeled the mask off to let out a gust of smoke and spit his cigarette right onto the floor of the cargo bay, right next to the conference table. In his eagerness to work, he'd forgotten about it despite the fact that I wrote nearly a paragraph about how great it was. After stamping it out with his foot, he went on as he put the mask back over his face, "Anyhow; as fer the air outside: it's just a lot of ammonia mixed in with your typical see-oh-two an free oxygen and the like. Don't get it in yer eyes or yer lungs and you'll be fine 'n' dandy. Worst it'll do to your skin is make the shit shiny, dry, and soft as a chinchilla. Hell, you'll be the talk o' the town-- get the attention of all the young brats. Boys from all over will line up fer a shot to get in yer pants or at least hold your hand."

With this information having been presented in his presence, Niel decided that now was the time for him to silently get up and saunter weakly over to the kitchenette. Someone had made some dry, white toast earlier and its smell still lingered enough to influence the shipwrecked shipwright.

Seiji took the hand scanner, looking it over it. There may have been the beginnings of a smile on his face , that was quickly buried under the concept of having to work side by side with Franklin. As stories about squids unfolded Seiji picked up one of the masks , looking it over in his hands . “ Squids is just what people call them, their actual name is the Mishhuvurthyar or more colloquially the Mishu , or yes, Squids “ He wrinkled his nose at the lack of accuracy “ But you needent worry about them, this is why we have Miss Koga .. and Miss Katsuragi.”

He stood, mask in hand and you may want to not take this man's advice, I get the feeling his concept of romance may not be something you two have in common” . Advice dispensed he started to make his way from the room.

Yori giggled a bit at seeing the interaction between Mr.Fox and Mr.Burton, it was amusing to see that Daziel did not simply follow the orders of someone like Fox. While Yori was not rebellious, she did not exactly have a good relationship with management. She didn't slack off or anything like that, but she always made sure to do things right when it came to design and production work, even if that meant higher cost or longer times. She didn't think that this was a bad thing either, if management had a problem with it it was their own fault for not understanding the project at hand. While not the official reason, some of the management staff definitely had this in mind when they chose her for this assignment.

Hearing her assignment she took the datapad with a nod. "I can do that, if it's mechanical debris I should be able to figure out something. I'd like to take my suit though...if there's a chance of hostile animals or something my suit has a few things that could be useful." She picked up her mask for now and planned to head to the armory once it was opened, for now she decided to check on Niel, he was the only one at the moment she was getting a real connection with and he didn't look like he was in the best of shape.

"Mr.Strellan, you don't look so good. Is everything okay?"

"I guess we really ought to get Sapphire out there and exploring then," Akemi declared enthusiastically with a big toothy grin that greatly emphasized her fangs. "Chinchillas are super adorable. And man, who doesn't like spaghetti? It seems like you might have a gift for making things sound appealing. If only we really did fight spaghetti monsters. How could you ever lose? There's no way their desire to win could ever beat out your urge to eat them. Anyway, I'll gladly give our cute little communications critter ample protection so she doesn't have to worry about a thing while she's documenting everything." Just about finished being weird the less miniature Neko headed for the armory to get suited up. "Hopefully a pasta monster somehow gets past me and gets all over her. I'd love to clean her up." A barely audible chuckle was the last they heard before she exited the room.

"I'm gonna be alright." Niel replied to Yori, smiling weakly at her. It was the first pleasant interaction he'd had with a coworker for quite some time. He took a moment to look at her and rub back some of his sweat-flattened hair. For the first time in his recent memory, there was a promising young person he approved of on the company's payroll. With another smile he added, "You're young, probably spend as much time playing with your toys as you do making them. Me? I'm old, spent years sitting at a drafting table with my toys. I just make them up, see! Haven't actually put anything together since Uesu was Emperor."

Illustrating some of his design prowess, Niel took the piece of toast he'd just whipped up and slapped it with a mustard knife a little before dropping some canned chicken on it. Before too long, he'd engineered a chicken sandwich-- all without fancy company grants or design standards. Truly, only a true sandwich artisan could tell that years of design experience had gone into this, the quintessential combo of chicken and mustard placed in perfectly measured amounts upon an immaculately toasted square of rough whole wheat bread. At least, it sure seemed that way to anyone who was hungry.

"I guess," He finally concluded with a shrug, "The Doctor's gonna put me on my diet and I'll be getting in shape while I'm down here. Sorry I can't join you out there today. You'll do fine, though, won't you? Probably smarter than me at the end of the day."

Over by the conference table, Franklin let out a little guffaw at Akemi.

"Hyeh, I bet you'd clean her off right good, eh, catgirl? With that sandpaper tongue o' yours?" He joked with a chortle. Sapphire was too young for his tastes, too inexperienced. But the way Akemi hungered for the girl amused the coot enough that he may have imagined some indignity or another for poor Sapphire to endure. He looked back at Seiji with those white teeth showing beneath the glassy plate of his breath mask and jeered, "Looks like the lil' vampire over here's got the same notion of romance's me, boy. Course, I know you loves a girl with soft hands, too-- yer jest bein' intentionally obstinate cuz you don't like ole' Spence. Whatever helps you sleep at night, boy."

Sapphire turned bright red at how the talks turned to intimacies of the body and shuddered at the thought of being a Squid plaything. "I-I .." She was glad that the facemask hid her expression. "O-okay.. good.. I gotta check this out!" Fumbling with the Datapad that came with the FatCOM headset. Getting it turned on.

She stood up, "get me a shotgun" She spoke over her shoulder as she scampered out of the meeting room to the Communication Center to check the info flow from the FatCOM. Once that was checked out, she grabbed an over the shoulder bag to carry the pad in along with spare batteries.

She grabbed herself a hat for protection and stuffed her hair into it as she put it on. She should've expected the crudeness of Adults and it warred with the morality that was pounded into her by her grandma and mother. She had a lot of growing up to do and had the curiousity of what it would be like. But she figured that a male would be all over her instead of a female. But then 'Those Yammies Army Catgirls' had no morales and was warned about them. Well one good thing about having a female lover, you couldn't get pregnant. Unless that is how the Yammies reproduce more Catgirls for their military.

"I think you'll be much better off with this," Akemi said, abruptly reappearing behind her, now suited in a standard green Impulse armor and proffering the ex-rancher a FatBoy. "Practically no recoil and it hooks up with your headset." The friendly elven eared lech continued to sport her seemingly perpetual smile which was yet to be hidden as her helmet rested at her side. "I've got the big stuff to take care of anything really dangerous anyway." The big stuff being a very heavy Origin Gauss rifle with a large and equally cumbersome drum barrel held upwards in her other hand for inspection. "So, what'd your family raise on that ranch besides cute girls? Giant cuddly soft pet Quahhgs?"

Yori wasn't sure exactly what to say to Neil and it showed on her face that she was struggling a little with her response. "I don't think I'm that smart, I'm just a little creative. You have a lot more experience in this than I do, so get better soon." She gave a light bow headed to the armory.

Once at the armory Yori took off her jumpsuit, revealing that she was only in bike shorts and a sports bra, and then took down her power suit, slipping inside it and getting comfortable. There was no elaborate fitting procedure, she simply got it on zipped it up, it activated soon after. The sleek black and read lightly armored suit made her look like some kind of soldier, but in truth it was only in looks even the suits functionality was well below something like a power armor, but it would give her a better chance of surviving personnel class weapons fire.

Now that she was suited up she grabbed a standard energy pistol II and her face mask. "I should've attached some sensor equipment to this suit...didn't think I'd be going outside on a hostile planet though."" She frowned some and made a mental note, adding that to the list of design ideas to improve the suit.

Startled at the sudden appearance of Akemi, Sapphire took the Fatboy from Akemi, and looking it over, very inexperienced like. "Cattle, horses, chickens and pig. A few dogs and cats," Sapphire fumbled with the weapon as it was totaly unfamiliar to her. All she wanted was something simple and gave her a good chance at hitting something. "And Corn, Wheat, and animal foods for the animals we raised. Of course the usual veggies in the garden."

She looked over the weapon with an obvious look of "wtf I do now with this?" Looking up at Akemi. "Huh.. could ya help me?" Unsure of what to expect, but hope that Akemi wouldn't steer her wrong.

"Sure!" Akemi chirped, eager to ingratiate herself with her new best bud. "You've got that neat little digital sight at the top that you can use to see around a wall by pointing your gun around it and looking through your FatCom. Your battery has enough juice for a hundred shots. The safety is that top switch on the left and the bottom one sets your firing mode. Your battery is in the stock and you get at it by turning that knob at the back right above it." Feeling it was all pretty simple the Neko only pointed out the turning lock at the rear.

It was very much against his nature to do this , Seiji told himself as he made his first steps into the armory . The concept of having to fight for his own life was alien to him, its why they had Neko. Its quite frankly why they had a lot of bio weapons with their own large weapons. This time around though , he had a hard time being confident enough in his would be 'team mates' to put his trust in them. He looked among all the sophisticated , dangerous pieces of machinery and felt a bit lost, it was all to much for him.

That is when he saw it. Perhaps the one weapon he felt would ever feel comfortable with. He picked up the ODM 10mm Raygun .It seemed simple, and comfortable , he doubted he could ask for anything more, and hoped he would never be in a position where he would need it.

Gun in hand, mask on and wishing he was somewhere else. Seiji the brave hero that he was, decided to comfortably wait aboard Elijah until others had taken the more experimental steps onto the brownie that was Ake.

Sapphire just nodded, figuring the knob that pointed out had to be very important. She continued to look it over and slowly figured the weapon out. Trigger was simple cause it looked like a trigger. She turned the lock that was pointed out, expecting something to happen. When nothing happened, she turned the lock back to its orginal position.

"Huh-uh..." Unsure of what to expect, Sapphire continued to fiddle with the weapon, reading all the little markings on it. She was abit startled at seeing the deck where the barrel pointed at the floor with cross hairs while she was looking at the weapon in hand. "I wish I had more time to figure this out." Trying not to appear a total idiot when it came to hightech weapontry.

Alice meanwhile returned from outside, this time she did not bother taking the hat and duster off, since they would leave soon. Her XAR rifle was thrown over a shoulder and reminded herself to do a maintenance on it when they come back. She also hope she will only have to maintain the rifle and no one from the team. Alice also grabbed a doctor pack with everything she could need for field first aid and also to do a makeshift autopsy. The woman also made sure to grab a backpack with 2 extra breathing maska, enough water and some rations. No one could say if they might get stranded by some kind of sand storm.

"Are you all ready?" Alice asked the rest of the group. "I would like to get back before dark. It is just too bad there was no space aboard to take few airbikes or a car."

"Well you'll get it in no time," Akemi dismissively responded with a reassuring warmth in her voice. "It's great being a Neko when you're using Yamataian equipment cuz you can just think things on and off with your mind." She paused for a moment. "I know," she declared, raising the tip of her index to just below eye level at her side. The little artificial superbeing quickly spun around and zipped over to the armory to return with an ammo belt holding three batteries. "Now you'll have enough for four hundred so you can do whatever to familiarize yourself with it. Heck, you can write your name with it. You'll have all the time in the world given where we are." After handing them over Akemi slipped on her helmet and made for the exit, mentally steeling herself in preparation for resisting the unparalleled temptation to consume the boundless baked brownie barrens.

Hopefully Sapphire would get shiny really fast and blind her from the endless treats that were all too to die for.

Sapphire took the extra bandolier of batteries for the weapon and followed Akemi out of the ship onto the vast plain of ... nothing but hard packed ground that had split due to the lack of moisture. She wrinkled her nose at the slimey feel to the air on exposed skin.

She shook her head at seeing what the weapon sight was pointing at and the surrounding area. She would have to get used to that. She turned the weapon sighting mechinsim off and slung the weapon over her shoulder.

She hoped that there would be time for a shower when she got back as these clothes were eobviously gonna get ruined. At least the hat would help keep her hair from getting frazzled and the sun out of her eyes, even though she still wore her sunglasses.

"Testing won..two... three.." Sapphire tested the equipment of the FatCOM system and was satified with the results. She panned the area around her. Taking in everything around her.

Yori checked over her suit now making sure that everything was in order. The Gauss dart launchers at her wrist were fully loaded as well, 5 red darts on her right wrist, and 5 yellow on the left. The red darts were designed to inject chemicals to cause intense pain at the site of inject, and the yellow were designed to cause muscle contractions and make movement difficult, however these were more of a defense than a weapon, as they only had a 15 meter range, and a needle that was only millimeters long, making them ineffective against targets wearing hard armor.

At her hips were three strange disc with, they were about half a foot in diameter and placed one at the left one at the right and one on the back. These were an original creation by her and again something made entirely for protection purposes. They were individual gravity 'mines' that she could use to hold things in place but nothing more. But without a proper interface she could only remotely control them within her line of sight. But these devices along with the Energy Pistol she had should be more than enough if some wild animal attacked, at least if she didn't freeze up under pressure.

When she saw Alice return with her bag of supplies she thought for a moment and decided that she could grab some as well. Getting a pack with extra mask and rations as well taking some of the more important pieces in her tool kit. She made sure to double check everything now, having been so worried about not getting eaten she nearly forgot tools that she could use, it was kind of obvious she wasn't used to leaving her workshop. Once that was all sorted out she nodded softly "Okay I think I am ready now, that should be everything I'll need."

While everyone else was yapping, drooling over mishhu, whatever they were up too, Katsuragi Mako was getting into her Sylph. As soon as the order to gear up had been given she had zipped off.

Mako needed the power armor equalizer since she was so tiny tiny and if a Mishhu did show up she would be fairly well screwed in direct combat!

She ditched her uniform and issued the wireless command to her new best friend to open up. Once the pilot compartment was open, she stowed her pair of mini NSPs in a small storage space, then wiggled into the small pilot space.

Inside she accessed the system and made her mini-SPINE connection to the Sylph's computer. She sealed up, fit on the wing pack, loaded ammunition into her HRG's and added some extra ammo stores, then went to join the others.

"Katsuragi Mako ready to blow things up!" the pint sized security officer said with a grin.