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Post by Circe on Sept 26, 2018 17:56:52 GMT -6
Squinting and surveying the landscape beneath her from her position up on an embankment, Rei scowled and uttered a few choice swears under her breath. A massive scrap yard, and all of the expected hazards lay before them. The rusted and torn husks of various machinery and ships lay strewn across the rust colored soil of Sky's Edge. A jungle clearing wasn't exactly unusual, but the fact that the jungle hadn't yet reclaimed it was. It was obvious that the owners had done something to discourage local flora and fauna from ruining their cash crop of parts. They had traded one hell for another, and while she wasn't exactly unappreciative of the assistance that had been offered by the others, she wasn't exactly enthralled with it either. Her ears were still ringing from the concussive blasts that had come from firing ranged weaponry in the small confines of the Cenote. She assumed it would pass sooner or later, but right now it was more of an annoyance than anything else. Sweat trickled down her face and neck, vanishing beneath the filthy grey tshirt she was currently wearing. The heat, humidity and exhaustion of everything were beginning to wear on her. Now she was tasked with finding her ship, a thing that was never really meant to see atmospheric flight, in a scrap yard the size of most cities. "Time to start looking.." Rei said more to herself than anyone else as she slid down the embankment. Getting off of the hell hole called Sky's Edge was currently her number one priority, and everything else was going to take a back seat as far as she was concerned. Her priorities were to find her ship, find whoever had thrown her into the Cenote and taken her ship, and get the hell off of Sky's Edge; but not exactly in that manner. Rei would be perfectly fine with kicking the thief's ass first if given half a chance, but they had surprisingly found the scrap yard with little interference. Sure there had been a few skirmishes, but they somehow didn't last very long to figure out who was friend or foe.
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Post by littlekreen on Sept 26, 2018 23:13:25 GMT -6
Free of the oppressive smoke and into the air Sprinkles shuffled in better spirits if not better health. She'd found a leafy plant by nibble and not get violently sick but all the plants made her nauseous. The bag of mushrooms hung at her side tethered by a line of cable in her grip-arm a small cargo bag she'd found for goodies. At the moment it mostly contained leaves the prey herbivores were eating and a few collections of fruits of more dubious edibility. Vegetable protein still very lacking in her diet her heart wasn't growing back despite attempts to attune with her healing abilities. It was going to be a long process of her limbs re-hardening and growing back and she was still down a wing. Not enough stable blood pressure to fly even if she had the second pair of wings for lift. She could glide decently well still and caught up from behind Rei wings wide in a bouncing moonwalk down the sharp embankment.
A small eddy of dust and scuffing of her landing moved in a breeze toward Rei. Heavy pulses of breathing came from the Gardener's Vulan organ for thermoregulation as she had to take a breather to cool off. The heat was oppressive long since turned sprinkles a filthy ruddy color now from all the smoke and dirt. The hot if thinner atmosphere made it harder for her to cool off even if her complex breathing system was working right. A little heavier on one side the chains on each of sprinkles' hands clinked as she walked up beside Rei.
She pointed at her antennae then to a few scrap piles nearby to shrug at the problem of finding anything here.
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Post by demikara on Sept 29, 2018 17:41:23 GMT -6
Cassie had followed Rei and Sprinkles to the yard and she frowned, and reached out. "...Even if I find mine, it won't have the computer system." She admitted. "Either that or it's so drained of power..." Well, she'd look just in case. If it was drained, maybe she could fix it. It hadn't been drained but if it was... Maybe then she'd have all her processing power back and it would be easier to think. That would be nice! She hoped it would be. "There should be rations though!" Cassie kept them in the standard places yes. She also kept them in random nooks and crannies and several in her interface bay. It took a lot of energy to move a ship after all.
The woman eyed the plants Sprinkles was nibbling on. "I really don't think you should be eating random vegetation." She pointed out to her new friend. It could be poisonous. That would be bad. Distracted, she missed a step and slid down the slope a bit, before she got her feet under her again. Given she still had the appropriated gun, well. That may have been bad. She looked over the scrap yard and sighed. There were a lot of ships here. It would take them ages to search through all of them. There had to be some way to make the task a less onerous one.
If they could find a ship with power, maybe she could try and sync with it, and could use it to search the yard for their ships. And hey, maybe it could give her ship a jump start, when she found it. If she found it.
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Post by Fife on Sept 29, 2018 22:14:07 GMT -6
Marlene was the next person to step over the small embankment overlooking the scrapyard. She grimaced first, but then tapped her communicator. "Decurion, go ahead and deactivate the camouflage..." She said somewhat boredly, before a pile of debris began to fluctuate, and shimmer.
From bow, to stern, debris shifted, and changed into the sleek black hull of an Aschen Reverence S class stealth corvette. It's glossy black, hexagonal plated hull glinted briefly in the sunlight, while the gouge across the front of the ship, that was once almost seamlessly blended in with the surrounding junkyard, became all the more obvious.
"Let's see how far the repairs have come, and get off this damn rock." Marlene quipped, slinging her PDW over her back.
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Post by Circe on Oct 3, 2018 9:27:36 GMT -6
"You do that... I'm finding my ship." Rei commented, ignoring Marlene's bravado. The woman was in many ways both obnoxious and arrogant in her opinion, and the sooner she was rid of the other the better. Rei hadn't asked for the crazy stalker, who had been making insane claims earlier before this whole mess on Sky's Edge had started.
Sighing she looked over at Sparkles, "Yeah I know, it's a junk heap." She replied glancing at the armful of plants that the Gardener had been grazing off. "You do know those are poisonous... right?" Rei asked Sprinkles looking at the other dubiously. The last thing she needed was for her first mate to kill themselves on a strange planet via even stranger plants.
"We'll get it sorted. Even if we just find the disks, I've probably got a way to mod them onto my ship. Never hurts to try." Rei added turning her attention over to Cassie. It seemed that the group had decided to form some sort of ragtag crew, all eager to get off the planet at any cost.
In the meantime though, at least three of them had work to do before they could even go anywhere.
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Post by littlekreen on Oct 4, 2018 19:35:44 GMT -6
A scorching breath of air came slowly as Sprinkles nodded at Rei. She opened the bag at her hip and pointed at the pile of leaves with a single small nibble in them. All rejects. She'd thought better of eating fruit which tends to be more concentrated. Most everything made her labrum tingle a sign of her immune system not to eat more. It complained about everything she'd seen so far and she'd been woozy twice. Best not tempt fate but she was so hungry.
Sprinkles thupped her chitinous stomach with a hollow noise of solidity. Then poked at Rei's belly. Sprinkles didn't have fat stores and was running on empty.
Holding both hands down made another breathy listless noise and pointed at her antennae cupping her hands behind them. The Gardener slowly scanned across the RF spectra she could see, mostly the mid to high range, hoping for something that drew attention by being more than rusted trash. Maybe the humm and jolt of a compressor her mind drifting back to food hoping for a fridge.
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Post by demikara on Oct 5, 2018 7:07:32 GMT -6
"Really?" Cassie perked up. If they found the disks, then she could definitely be whole again. It was hard to think without her processors, and hard to keep track of things fully. It was especially hard to remember mush of before she had been tossed into the prison. Her mind returned to the earlier thought and she eyed the Aschen Reverence. "If we find a ship with power, I can probably do a scan. But not that ship. I don't hook up to aschen ships. It takes ages to get rid of their stupid viruses and compatibility is hard." Okay, so it was software to protect their ships, but as far as Cassie was concerned, they were viruses. They certainly tried to modify her protocols often enough.
Still, there was hope! Man, she hoped they found her ship pretty bad too. She wanted her processors and her computers back. Cassie considered her options and then frowned. "Hey, did we introduce ourselves? I don't remember." She rubbed her head. Still, she brightened again, noticeably. "I'm hungry too, giant bug friend who helped me escape the fire." What was she talking about earlier. Names? Did they introduce themselves? Cassie couldn't remember. She rubbed her head, and frowned. She was getting worse, wasn't she? Her ship was gone, gone, gone and it was like losing all her limbs at once. She felt hobbled and frankly confused.
She wanted to hook into a ship again, to feel like she was whole again. This thinking without was slower and cumbersome and she wasn't really all that great at remembering things without her memory banks. And if she hooked in again, she could feel space around her and navigate and fly again. And maybe shoot people and steal their cargo, but she did ask first. They should have just given it over. Cassie brightened. "Cargo! I have cargo. If they didn't take it. If they found it!" She was very good at hiding her cargo, and she vaguely recalled jewelry and smaller things as well as the larger stuff she had hid in her hold. Could it be hiding if it was in her hold? The pirate wasn't sure.
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Post by Circe on Oct 15, 2018 14:26:16 GMT -6
"Yeah, I don't see why not.. I could use a navigator that isn't some jackass AI." Rei commented idly as she scanned the junk yard, squinting from the glare off the metal and dust. "And I don't blame you.. Aschen ships have issues." She added as she picked up a piece of detritus and hefted it briefly in one hand as she examined it. It wasn't anything like what she was looking for, and seemed to have been out there for some time exposed to the elements of Sky's Edge and it's jungle.
"Hey hands off, you don't see me poking you do you?" Rei protested swatting at Sprinkle's hand. "Yeah I know your hungry, we're all pretty hungry... let's just try to find Pinkie-Pie over there's ship." She added hoping that there would be something in the rations for all parties involved to eat. Though, she suspected that Marelene had her own and was more than eager to gloat over that fact.
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Post by littlekreen on Oct 15, 2018 16:18:24 GMT -6
Hands up Sprinkles pressed them together then nodded to apologize. Antennae arcing to and fro as directional antenna listening to the mid to high end of the RF spectrum. If something was on and strong she might hear it but there was... a lot of noise. So much metal around reflected signals everywhere. Discordant pulses of reflected gains assaulted her senses that even if there was quietus in it she couldn't discern it. Directions and loudness at least unless she was a whole lot closer to the source.
Though wobbling a bit she knelt down to draw what she sensed for Rei around a X in the middle. Hard-surfaced fingers moved quickly to draw various circles some small and close by others little more than a ? and an arrow. Inside the circles went either one or three finger holes if there were a few voices or many.
A finger pressed to one side of her as text erupted in the dirt: "Too much metal. I hear echoes." "Can't eat shrooms. Fluorine for heals."
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Post by demikara on Oct 15, 2018 16:36:44 GMT -6
"I'm a great navigator! Especially when I'm hooked in." She grinned widely. "And my name isn't Pinkie Pie, it's Cassie." She read what the bug thing said and blinked. "Flourine? Like in toothpaste?" Or was that flouride? Cassie went to access her data banks and winced. "No. That's not right..." She rubbed her forehead and frowned. "No offense, but I'd rather be in the same physical shape as you guys. It'd be way better than what they did to me."
The others had been physically tortured, basically. Cassie could barely string two thoughts together. Muttering to herself she spoke. "Geez. You steal from just like a handful of ships...maybe several ships even, and they rip your mind in two." Jerks. She could think yes, but it hurt to think too hard. She wanted her memory back, and her processors and her ship. It was hard to think and her hair was longer than it should be and she had no clue how long she had been locked up. All she knew was that her mind was heavily fractured.
She had been ripped out of her connection sharply, suddenly. Her ship had been hobbled, if she remembered it. Everything was hazy. Her crew...she didn't know what had happened to the rest of the crew. It had been a standard heist, everything going smoothly, until she had been disconnected without warning, knocked senseless by the sudden death of her ship's systems. Hopefully there would be something to recover still. Oh Gods, she hoped there was something to recover.
It was so hard to think...
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Post by Circe on Oct 17, 2018 17:26:26 GMT -6
Rei frowned, seeing that the three of them would be worse than herself and whatever his name had been back in the Cenote. "Flourine... it's in most dental pastes as sodium flouride. But we'll probably find it here in it's industrial uses such as coatings and coolants." She said trying for a moment to figure out why she had known that, much less how. It wasn't an easy task as her thoughts were likely just as jumbled as Cassie's. Her head still ached from where something or someone had hit it, leaving a dark stain matted into the woman's hairline.
Running a hand through her hair, pushing it out of her face and sighed in frustration. "Look, I'm not the one randomly tasting poisonous plants and turning the jungle into their own private buffet. Yes, I know you can't eat the damn shrooms..." She replied. The conversation eventually reached a cyclical nature as the blue haired woman went back and forth with the insectoid like alien kneeling on the ground. The two seemed to have some kind of previous relationship outside of the brief time they'd been together on Sky's Edge. "Just.. let's concentrate on finding.. stuff."
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Post by littlekreen on Oct 17, 2018 22:53:52 GMT -6
Though her strength hit a low average with her lungs and circulatory system starting to replumb until she ran out of food sprinkles was still quite strong. Not quite the peak and low enough to casually ram a rifle down a man's throat. Especially after her ire long since calmed by greenery everywhere even if it all turned out poisonous. Someday her home planet would be this green but she'd need to get off this toxic planet first. Sprinkles stood up and nodded looking forlornly at the emptied bag once containing noxious leaves.
She pointed at a free space of dirt as text spread there, "Cassie doesn't. Jealous Rei. No hamburger trees."
Cassie got her own note, as Sprinkles snapped her fingers and pointed at it, "Am Sprinkles, Gardener. Fluorocarbon blood. Need food for new heart. Cassie head damaged?"
As Sprinkles looked around errant trash piles in range sprayed and scattered untouched. Spraypaint cans squirted out of a microwave and bits and bobs of hard things leaped out of the dirt to hover then drop. It tired and heated her up less by comparison not to move and rooted around with her telekinetics instead. Not that it was especially an energy savings. A small metal cleaning robot shot from a pile to waiting hands and grip-arms. Sprinkles inspected it for damage easily distracted by mothering instincts.
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Post by demikara on Oct 18, 2018 7:50:23 GMT -6
"I was pulled out of a cyber connection with my ship violently." Cassie admitted. "And I can't feel my ship. I...I basically am was - my ship. I have a...well, I had a connection with it, to the point that the ship's systems and I were intertwined. I don't actually know where I ended and the ship began. It responded to my every thought." She shrugged. "And without the memory banks, thinking is difficult. It's like they tore my mind in two." She didn't know how else to put it. "So yeah. My head is damaged." Her brain was damaged. Not that thinking was particularly easy right now. Cassie rubbed her head and looked around. "Let's just pick a direction. There should be food and supplies somewhere here." She grinned.
"And if we can find a ship with power, I can jack in and find my ship and yours." They just needed to find one with power, that wasn't Aschen. Then she could run the sensors and get them a general path to follow for her ship and theirs. In the mean time, she had to keep trying to keep up. "Hey keep an eye out for ammo. We're going to need more if we run into anyone." It wouldn't do to run out mid battle.
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Post by Fife on Oct 19, 2018 20:40:52 GMT -6
Marlene made a face at Cassie's comments about viruses and Aschen ships. "Aschen ships aren't designed for just any random entities to interface with them, we have sensitive data to protect." She retorted, and then she scoffed. "The Blackwing isn't in flight condition, anyway." She said, pulling up a communicator that was seated at her hip. "I was suggesting we go to my ship, get some food, and some medical attention before we set off."
A flickering hologram of a woman appeared, as if it was standing on Marlene's right gauntlet.
"Eve.." Marlene said. "I need you to scan, and extrapolate all possible energy sources within this area." Marlene ordered, and EVE's monotone voice replied. "Acknowledged, shall I make an attempt to contact Fleet for reinforcements? Be advised that I seem to be detecting a malfunction in subspace communications, and I am running on backup cores."
Shaking her head, Marlene frowned. "Negative... just advise me when you find something."
"We can ditch these primitive weapons for some real guns, too."
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Post by Circe on Oct 23, 2018 18:05:05 GMT -6
"Oh for the... I'm not jealous Sprinkles and hamburger trees sound distinctly disgusting." Rei commented rolling her eyes. While the idea of foraging wasn't exactly distasteful to her, she still knew better than to eat plants she knew nothing about. Rei had heard the stories about people who had managed to crash on some distant, but life supporting planet, only to find out it was biologically incompatible with human life.
Surveying the surrounding area again, the woman realized just how much trouble they were in. "It's a junk yard.. let's find Sprinkles something to eat first.. before she raids the crazy bitch's ship for toothpaste." Their weapons may have been adequate for getting out of the Cenote, but they still had the risk of having to fend off things that would have liked have them as their supper. "But... food sounds like a good plan, both of you." She said turning to Cassie and Marlene.
As much as she would have liked to, she knew that if the help wasn't accepted then it wasn't likely they would get off Sky's Edge. Starvation and dehydration, not to mention predation by the local flora and fauna was a real risk. "And no one wants to jack into your damn ship anyway... I'm sure we can find something for Cassie here to work with anyway."
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