MISSION: WAYPOINT SHRIL, PT. I

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: WAYPOINT SHRIL
WHEN: Day :025 - :029
SUMMARY: Welcome to Waypoint Shril, the soon-to-be home to the galaxy's most incredible competition!
WARNINGS: N/A, will update as necessary.

SOMETHING IS WRONG. Strange, how a moment ago everything seemed perfectly fine - as normal as things get on Station 72 - and then the next the entire void shifts by a degree. There's a crackling, anticipatory feel in the air. Dwelled on too long and it might become nauseating, triggering some hindbrain impulse the nervous system under the skin or--

Something is coming.

Something is coming undone.

In the heart of the Station in a small, featureless circular room, The Prince and Cathaway dredge the Station from its mooring. There's a rush of shared adrenaline, then an massive sensation like an inhale. A gulp of breath. Relief floods through the body like something palpable as the massive beehive structure of the Station snaps into real space above the deep space space station known as Waypoint Shril.

( ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬...Please meet us in the hangar. We have your next assignment....▬▬▬. )

Once they've arrived at the hangar, the Hosts will be briefed by Cathaway and Prince on their new objective. They'll be given their mission kits, along with a written brief on their databanks. The usual warnings apply. Try not to kill anyone. Do not get killed yourself. And accomplish your mission. From there, pack yourself onto the transport shuttle and make your way to the Waypoint. --One of you knows how to drive, right?

Once ejected from the Station, you'll find yourself on one of literally thousands of ships. The black space above Waypoint Shril is full to bursting with air traffic from the smallest pod-shaped one being ship to the most gargantuan floating planet cruisers. Some of them rival even the Station which now lurks, a mottled white and grey latticework structure that's no more bizarre to look at than any of its neighbors.

VROOM. A ship shaped like a sword with a naked multi-limbed alien painted in lascivious, technicolor detail along the blade slices directly across the path of the shuttle transport. It blares a proximity alarm and a holographic message full of swearing and threats pops up even as the ship blasts down toward the traffic choked landing platform in the distance. A school of insectoid fighters go swarming after it. In the distance, the flash of ships dropping out of hyperspace through the gate rings gleams like a strobe light and on around the landing platform itself buzz two dozen security vessels desperately trying to keep order.

Welcome to Waypoint Shril. Don't crash into anyone on the way in.

     I. PLATFORM ALFA
When the ship finally docks on Waypoint Shril - after a lot, lot longer than you may have liked -, the scene that greets you is more hectic than even the busiest rush-hour on Concordia. There are simply too many people in too small and too hastily prepared of a space. The platform itself was clearly designed for utility, not for comfort and not for style. The walls- towering sheets of welded metal from a countless number of sources, flecked with old paint and the occasional slash of grafitti - offer nothing in the realm of sound dampening, and the electro-cloth banners that hang from the ceiling, advertising the Aurora Blue Arena! in dozens of different languages do little to help. As a result, the entire platform echoes with thousands of voices trying to talk over each other and the newly enhanced intercom system struggling to be heard over the din as it works to provide simple directions and instructions for the teeming mass of tourists.

In the press of flesh and the constant motion, it’s easy to get swept away from your party. It’s easy to find that the items you just had on you are suddenly missing, expertly palmed away by slippery fingers as you try to push your way towards the series of pneumatic tubes leading to the Waypoint proper. Ship's hydraulics hiss, lights flash, and the smell of greasy stall food spreads out from the edges of the platform. There are a few bright-eyed, clever locals - or what count for locals on Waypoint Shril - who don’t hesitate to reach out and grab your arm, offering to be your guide. Asking if you’re here as a spectator or a participant. Asking if you need information. Company. Everything has a price.

Get your bearings - if you can. It’s going to be a long couple of weeks.

     II. THE MOST FABULOUS PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE (Please Excuse Our Dust!)
Waypoint Shril's main thoroughfares and twisting platforms may have made sense to someone, but now absolutely no one knows how to navigate them as the ABA! has swept through Waypoint, bulldozing and building up anything and everything in its path. Oh, did you like that tentacle sandwich shop you stopped in five minutes ago? Too bad! We decided two minutes ago we're tearing it down to make way for a spa-slash-beer-garden! Stand back please, there are explosives detonating in this area in 3, 2, 1…--!

Everywhere you look, Waypoint Shril is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Maybe there are places on the outskirts, far from the Arena Zone that aren't literally being paved over or built on top of, but they seem to be the exception to the rule. Don't get lost as the neighborhood quite literally changes shape around you!

     III. MEET THE COMPETITION
Between the fabulous prizes and the fabulous fame - every single still-living winner of the previous competitions became household names before they stepped out of the Arena, then went on to live lavish lives of excess where they're paid exorbitant fees just to be seen and heard, known for canoodling and cavorting with the best, the brightest, the most privileged the Galaxy has to offer- it’s no surprise that the ABA! draws competitors like a magnet. And while not everyone advertises their status, plenty do - hoping to exchange the slimmest possibility of their victory for favors or drinks or just plain old attention. They’re loud, they’re visible, and plenty of them are very, very drunk, or whatever counts for drunk for their species.

If you want to size up the competition, now’s the time - in the middle of Blunt Force, with scores of other competitors lined up. The club itself is home to a deep, thrumming beat that vibrates through your chest, the industrial concrete walls covered in splashes of electro-paint that pulses in time with the beat. The floor is dark and smooth, the bar is long and there isn’t a single seat to be found at it, just an endless slab of some ancient black stone that drinks slide back and forth across. Every bartender wears a half of a mask in clear plastic run through with simple circuitry in complex patterns and they’ll keep you hydrated for a modest price. Above the floor on a catwalk composed of corrugated metal and transparasteel there are low couches and cushions in rich fabrics of a hundred different patterns of velvet and neon, two dozen tables, and another small bar that will hand out drinks and powders and oils and smoke. The patrons are as varied as anything else in this place, as hodge-podge. Slender, slick looking people with hunched backs and long necks. Short, broad aliens with four legs and four arms. Something heavily shrouded, the only part of them visible a proboscis. Some are here to dance, some to drink, some to talk and more than a few to fight - maybe for keeps. Hell, you might be one of them.

     IV. WILDCARD
There's plenty to see, do and explore. You've got a few days before the competition kicks off - might as well make the most of it.

---

((OOC NOTES: Welcome to Waypoint Shril! This log covers the arrival on the Waypoint and can be used for anything prior to the start of the Aurora Blue Arena! on Day :029. However, feel free to make your own logs if you choose! You can find a complete mission overview and a place to ask any mission-specific questions over at the OOC post.

Thanks everyone!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam gravitates towards her automatically, picking her out of the crowd just as easily as she spotted him. He smirks back, a flare of amusement spreading out across their mental link. Yeah, fair enough, though he's pretty sure that even as good as he is at spotting pickpockets, one of them would've been successful if he'd actually been carrying something.

It's her second comment that catches his attention. He doesn't speak whatever language she'd dipped into there - but that doesn't matter, not with their connection. He can tell it's something different at the same time as he gets the meaning, and he's not sure if it's just because of the symbiote or because he's closer to her than he is some of the others. ]

( Might've been me at that age if not for the way people usually crossed to the other side of the street when they saw me. )

[ And if not for his dad, too, but honestly that was never as much of a deterrent as the way people on the streets of Harlem looked at him and wanting to prove them wrong. Of course, he hadn't done that in the end, but now's not the place for that. Point is, even though he'd always noticed everything going on around him, he'd always felt people's eyes on him in return, wary. ]

[earthborn]

( Sounds like we'd have been good friends, then. I like me a thieving hoodlum, scaring all the nice folk right off the sidewalks. )

[The image, unbidden, surfaces like meat in stew-- Shepard's view of her hometown, her childhood. It's urban, streets choked with garbage and filthy; it's not New York, or at least no New York Sam has known, too much is subtly altered, new technology mounted over the old buildings like neon lighting. To Shepard, the strangeness seemed natural, of course Holo-displays belong bolted to filthy, crumbling brick facades. Where else would they go? Then the vision is gone, as quickly as it had come, and only there for the glance it might take to identify it in the broadest strokes.]

( Get you a nice red coat, you can join the Reds too. )

[Shepard hates, and hated, the Tenth Street Reds with a fervor not usually applied to still-living bodies. But they had kept her alive when there had been nowhere else to go, a not-insignificant accomplishment for what had begun as little more than a street gang. There's that much to thank them for, at least.]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ He takes in the image eagerly, always glad to get a glimpse of the world she comes from. It's strange, of course, even with the feeling of naturalness that he gets from her, but he likes it. Big cities always seem to have the same vibe.

There's a hum of contemplation across the mental link at her words, as he considers going with it. Making a joke, keeping the sense of camaraderie, never going too deep for either of them. If it were someone else, that's probably what he'd do. But it's Shepard. ]

( I was a troublemaker in a lot of ways, but not that one. It's just you don't get to look like me in the neighborhood I grew up in and not have people assume you are. ) [ So many people thought he was a criminal, figured he'd grow up to be one, and, well. He proved them right, didn't he? But that's no where he wants to go. ] ( The one time I might've, the military was there. )

[ He kind of wonders if it was similar, for her. ]

[earthborn]

( The more things change, the more they stay the same. But look at you now-- ) [There is a searching pause, like she's trying to remember something, half-forgoten, but important. She lets it go, after a moment, but it's annoyed, unfinished thing. She was trying to remember his rank... but he'd never told her, not directly.] ( ...You're pretty respectable, you know that? I never gave up being a degenerate, ask anyone. )

[She likes that, the image of a younger Sam, bitter with the promise of a world that expects nothing of him. Determined to prove something, his mettle, his ability, or if nothing else, to prove everyone who ever talked shit about him wrong. There's a core of pride in this man after all, and she wishes she'd known him then. Shepard understands intimately the way that structure and simplicity of purpose can pull you away from that life, the way it can change you into something more well-aimed, if no less powerful.]

( How'd you join up? You talk about it in the past tense, but you can't have been out all that long, the way I see it. Tell me a story, Sam. )

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ He huffs out a soft laugh, though it's not exactly humorous, at both the first part of that and the second part. The first one because it's true, the second one - well. Sam'll always consider himself one of the good guys, but he's not exactly sure he can be called respectable anymore.

But he knows what the pause'd been for, and at least that's easy enough. ]

( Tech sergeant. Or at least, I was. Some shit went down before I got here, don't know if I still got that rank now. )

[ If this was outloud, he'd say it casually, like it's no big deal - but as it is, there's a hint of bitterness there that makes it pretty clear that it's fresh. So he's grateful for the opportunity to move on, to tell her a story. ]

( I was out for five years, but I got back in. Wasn't exactly military these last few years, though. ) [ He slides into a seat at an outdoor cafe, a silent invitation to join him if she's feeling like having a conversation in person - or because she's hungry, if she isn't. ] ( I was barely eighteen when I joined up. )

[earthborn]

]The decision comes easily, and Shepard moves to intercept him at the cafe. She's always hungry, after all, and it's rarely undesirable to converse with Sam.]

( It was sixteen, for me. I lied on my forms-- you're not supposed to be able to get into the Alliance until eighteen. Should've been arrested, but. I got lucky. )

[In her more cynical moments, Shepard is willing to concede that she probably only got a pass for being young, orphaned, biotic, and unamplified. Human biotics weren't registered and monitored anymore, but when she had been young and freshly-enlisted, that hadn't been the truth. It was a tough old life, no matter how you cut it, and the best option was, as always, the military.

But that's neither here nor there. She shakes off the curl of bitterness-- is it her own, or did she just catch it from Sam? Getting harder to tell, recently.]

( Had a friend looking out for me, too. )

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam's already passing over his menu to Shepard as she grabs a seat with him, shooting her a smile and the wordless impression that maybe they should just order one of everything.

She's always hungry, and so is he, these days. ]

( Sounds familiar. )

[ Sam didn't have to lie, even if he made the decision almost a year before he was old enough, but he knows other people who did. And by other people, he mostly means Steve, who also got lucky by virtue of having a friend. ]

( Seems like a good friend. Or a really bad one. ) [ It's an invitation to talk more about it, if she wants to, though there's nothing like pressure behind the words. He wants to know, of course. He cares about her, and is curious as hell about her, and he'll take anything she's willing to tell him - but he'll also back off, if she's not in the mood to revisit history. ]

[earthborn]

[She was used to constant hunger a long time before it became quite so dire. Shepard forgets to think about it, about the way she must be projecting-- indeed, she forgets that other people don't feel this way. Everybody's a little egocentric like that, in some small way.]

( Commander David Anderson )

[She offers him the image, fuzzy with the uncertainty of childhood memory-- that was how he'd looked, when they met. Too clean in his bomber jacket and uniform pants, hems dirty but fresh-pressed. He used to shave his head, back then, too vain to allow a visibly receding hairline, and in her mind's eye he towered. The memory can't hold, swiftly melting into the way he'd been when she saw him last, looking up at her from the broken ramp of a ruined highway, throwing her tags, and nodding with grim purpose. Crow's feet. He had wrinkles, and she'd never really thought about what that might mean. Anderson wasn't allowed to be old.]

( 'Course it's Admiral Anderson now. He bought me pancakes, kept letting me pick his pocket like he thought I didn't know. Kept coming back for more, too. Eventually he talked me into joining up, leaving the gangs behind-- probably talked a bunch of other people out of kicking me out on my ass again, like I deserved. I never had a father. )

[there is a sharp, awkward pause while Shepard buries herself in the menu. The waitress comes around, costumed and coiffed and quite possibly more of a waiter than a waitress. Whatever they are, they're a very interesting color of yellow-green, gliding around with a series of jointed, spider-like legs at the end of long appendages. When the orders are placed, Shepard's embarrassment has faded, somewhat.]

( Sorry. That got... kinda personal. )

[She has no idea why she told him that, except that she trusts him. Terrifying thought.]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam leans forward a little, taking a pull from the flavored, sparkling drink that seems to serve as water here as he listens. As he takes in what she shows him, commits it to memory. He'd been important to her, the same way Sam's father had been important to him - maybe more, because it seems like he'd been around longer.

He disagrees, that a kid like Shepard had been had deserved to be kicked out on her ass, but he doesn't say that.

When the moment stretches into something awkward, when it becomes something that Shepard turns away from, Sam lets it be. He pulls his attention away from Shepard and to the alien waiting on them, ordering more than he could have ever eaten back home, and waits Shepard's embarrassment out. There's nothing he could say that would make it fade quicker than just giving her the space for a moment.

But when she apologizes, he shakes his head. ]

( Nah. I don't mind personal, with you. Not if you don't. )

[ He trusts her, too. His trust... it don't come easy, these days. He more than gets the feeling that it's the same with her. It means something, to him, that she'd tell him this. A lot. ]

[earthborn]

Eh.

[It's not... quite the right sentiment, but it comes out aloud, because that's the easiest way to put it. This is skimming a little too close to therapist territory, and that sets Shepard on edge for reasons she both can identify damn well and at top volume, and also... a lot of other reasons.

It's complicated. It's always complicated. So: "Eh." That's the best she's got.]

( Y'know, Tech Sergeant is a stupid rank anyways ) [It might take you more than a Decade to earn the rank, but it's obviously a stupid rank. It smells like Air Force.] ( You come work for me, I'll get you a pay raise and a bunch of underlings. Spectre privilege. C'mon, everybody loves my ship, and Normandy needs a new XO. You'd be good at it. )