WAYPOINT SHRIL, PT.3

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: All (New Hosts may tag anything from their arrival date on Waypoint Shril forward.)
WHERE: THE FAIR HEART, WAYPOINT SHRIL & SURROUNDING SPACE
WHEN: Day :038 - :039
SUMMARY: A theft, a rescue, and of course - the grand finale of the galaxy's most fabulous competition.
WARNINGS: N/A, will update as necessary.

LATE ON DAY :038, a select group of Hosts makes their way to the imposing mobile headquarters of the ABA!, the retrofitted prison ship known as The Fair Heart. The goal? Steal those prizes, break out the captured rescue team, and make a clean getaway.

Or just get away at all. That works too.

THE FAIR HEART
     A. THE RECON TEAM Congratulations, you're in a cell and stuck with a tracking bracelet. But it isn't all bad. The food's okay and the company is-- well, whatever. It could always be worse. Sure, getting interrogated isn't the best part of the day, but if you're lucky you might get to sit down and have a conversation with the mercenary group's second in command, Vinka. Vinka is nice. He cracks jokes. He plays space chess. He's clearly the good cop. If you're unlucky you'll get stuck answering the questions of a very dry, humorless cyborg called Bradd who likes to use his arm attachment to shock people.

But eventually you begin to sense the minds of your fellow Hosts nearing. Time to prepare for an escape.

     B. THE HEIST TEAM You all know where you're going, right? Now it's just a matter of getting there more or less safely. There's a bunch of security measures between you and your goal, so proceed carefully. Or don't. After all, the rescue team is headed in the opposite direction and someone will need to cover their tracks won't they?

     C. THE RESCUE TEAM Here's what you know: somewhere in this labyrinthine ship your friends are being held captive. Where they are and how to get to them is a goshdang mystery. And once you figure it out, it looks like you're going to be getting very close with The Fair Heart's personnel. On top of that, shouldn't you be helping to distract security from paying attention to the vault? Boy, you've got your work cut out for you.

     GET THE HECK OUTTA DODGE Once the prizes are removed from the vault or the prisoners are taken from their cells, an alarm will sound. Time to go! Fight or cleverly elude your way out of The Fair Heart. Get a ride (any ride will do) and take off. Mind The Fair Heart's guns, darling.

     FASTER. FASTER WOULD BE BETTER. What's that saying? Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Once you've escaped The Fair Heart, you'll be facing off with a literal armada of ships trying to blow you out of the sky. Luckily you've got backup. Station 72 is the biggest thing in the sky and it's moving. Towards you. Through other ships. There's a lot of explosions.


WAYPOINT SHRIL
     LET THE GAME BEGIN! Remember how everyone had to carefully register their team and jump through a bunch of hoops to get to the finale of the ABA!? Well there's been a scheduling change. Thanks to Miss Mystery's announcement, everyone and their great grandmother is now an official competitor. And lots and lots of them are taking it seriously.

     GET TO THE CHOPPER! There's a mad dash to take to the sky. Waypoint Shril has been transformed into utter chaos. Platform Alfa is a mess. Ships are being hijacked. ABA! employees driving shuttles are now ditching their jobs to compete. Waypoint civilians who stuck around through the madness are taking their ships out of their garages and taking off through the Jump and the Graveyard. If you're a Host on Waypoint Shril, it might be a good idea to get off it.

Luckily if you were competing in the ABA! you're practically ready to go. After all, weren't most of you building a ship to compete in the finale with? If you take the fruits of your labor, you better hope your astroengineering holds up to a high stress environment.

CAUSE A RUCKUS: Your friends are flying against an armada. Shooting down the competition might be a good idea.



THE GRAND FINALE
GUESS WE BETTER JUMP: Just make sure to get to the Station before it jumps to the void. It would be very, very easy to get left behind. (Be aware that if a Host is left behind, you will be dropping the game.)

---

((OOC NOTES: This log is the catch-all for the finale of Waypoint Shril. It covers the heist, the rescue and the escape from The Fair Heart in addition to any events taking place concurrently on Waypoint Shril. It covers the escape from this universe and taking the Station back into the void. Questions? Check out the OOC POST. If you have additional questions that aren't answered there, feel free to either drop a note in the log-specific questions thread or touch base with us on the Mod Contact page.

'Wait, can I NPC this character?' When it doubt, the answer is probably yes. Use your best judgement, but we encourage you to go wild. Should you desire mod input or for us to bounce into a thread, feel free to reach out to us and we'll be happy to accommodate. We may also be threadjacking some of these threads, however don't feel compelled to wait for us to do so. Have fun and don't get killed!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

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HEIST

[greentech]

[ Mission Impossible music intensifies. ]

BOARDING IN PROGRESS

[greentech]

[ This is probably the easiest part; they drive up to the ship and now they just have to get through the hull - or a convenient hatch. Good thing we've got spacesuits! Right? ]

DON'T MAKE ME TURN THIS CAR AROUND

[shiro2hero]

[Okay, easiest part. Sure thing. Just drive the stealth ship up to a bigger ship and ... board it. Attach to the side and go from there. It's navigating through the cluster of other ships in the Waypoint space that's the issue. If they can't see you on any scanners... it's up to you to avoid them.]

Brace yourselves. Coming down on the hull now.

[Even if he sets them down as gently as possible, there's going to be a bump.]

Everyone ready?

INFILTRATING THE SHIP

[greentech]

[ Once the team is in, they have to find their way to the known path to the vault. There are guards and various security systems in their way. Failure isn't an option. Good luck, team. ]

OTA | THREADJACK AWAY

[wille]

[ Misato won't suffer any questions about her well-being or that of the other prisoners. It's all about the mission, first. Her tone, if the mind's voice can have such things, is stern, clipped. ]

( Tell me what you see. )

THE VAULT

[greentech]

[ Where dreams go to die. ]

if this vault goes below 50mph it will explode

[lavelly]

[By some miracle they have managed to reach the vault itself, more or less unscathed. Here they are, at the end of their journey. It looms before them all, impassive and intimidating, like the gates of hell. It is the point of no return. There's a lot of dramatic weight here is what I'm getting at.

There also doesn't seem to be an obvious way to open it.]

( Well. Now what? )

ESCAPE

[greentech]

[ Time to get out! Hope you've got everything you came for. ]

[viperfire]

[ Oh, dear. It looked like it was time to go, wasn't it? But however were they supposed to get all these ridiculous prizes off the ship? Nasu hopped aboard the space yacht, taking in an instrument panel encrusted in what appeared to be brightly-colored rainbow rhinestones.

She yanked the sunshade down and was pleasantly surprised when a spiraling, mother-of-pearl key fell into her hand. The hover engine roared to life. ]

Hey! Why don't we take this?

THE RESCUE

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ r-e-s-c-u-e ]

PREMISSION

[sizeofyourbaggage]

Strap yourself into the stealth ship or pace up and down if you’re feeling antsy. Now’s the time for any last minute mission plans, getting your head in the game, touching base with anyone on Waypoint and the heist time - or with the recon team, once the stealth ship has gotten close enough to the Fair Heart that those held captive there can communicate even with non broodmates.

[ If anyone else’d like to pilot feel free, otherwise Sam’ll handle the take off and landing and use the autopilot in between - and probably rope Misato or Clint into driving back. ]

for Damon

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Damon's anger burns at the back of his mind like a physical force, and it's all Sam can do not to let it become his own. He breathes, in and out, and focuses on the task at hand.

When they'd found out about the recon team's capture, they'd moved immediately to form a plan to get them back, coordinating with those who'd been gearing up for the heist. Sam'd done his best to get Damon involved, to distract him from his anger with planning, with moving.

Now that they're sitting on the ship, in route - well. Now there's just waiting, and Sam doesn't think about it before he moves next to Damon. He opens up their connection wider, letting Damon's anger wash over him - feeling it as if it were his own, because it could be, it is. Without Clint's presence in his head, knowing that Misato's held captive out of reach - there's a whole mess of anger and panic jumbled up in there. But this is what Sam does, what he's done since he was nineteen or so. He lets it go as if it were his own, too, fingers curled around his challenge coin and breathing slowly. ]

( Is it because it's Misato? )

for Misato

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ He tries, periodically, to reach her mind. It's frustratingly distant, like trying to grab hold of the clouds that usually surround his mind, just slipping through his touch, but he tries.

Damon's able to contact her long before Sam can, and while Sam doesn't usually think too much about the mental limitations of not being brood with some of the people he cares about - he's close enough with them that they might as well be, most of the time - he does now. He does now, and he pushes himself, pushes their connection.

It's a relief when they get close enough to the Fair Heart that he finally picks her up, when he can brush against her mind with a soft sweep of feathers. ]

( Finally, man, what the hell good is this for if we can't use it to stay in touch in something like this? )

DISTRACTIONS

[sizeofyourbaggage]

Now’s the time to lure the guards away from their stations - to distract them from the cells and from what the heist team is getting up to. Use what the recon team found to scatter and slink about the ship. Work in pairs or alone, set your own booby traps or set off theirs - hopefully intentionally - set fires and pick off the guards as best as you can.

Just don’t get caught. And try not to kill anyone unnecessarily.

[ Looking at you Damon. ]

AT THE CELLS

[sizeofyourbaggage]

The guards are distracted - hopefully. The one that’s been compelled with its “prisoner” to lead the way to the cell blocks has done is job and is bringing up

Any last minute advice from the captive recon team? Tearful reunions and pats on the back? Guards lurking in a corner that were unseen until the alarms started going off as the barriers went down?

ESCAPE

[sizeofyourbaggage]

The time for sneaking and distractions is over. Charge your way out - try not to set off any remaining booby traps - past any guards that might be left. If you’ve split off from the team during the distractions, now’s the time to meet back up with them.

No one gets left behind.

AFTER THE AFTERPARTY | OTA

[wille]

[ They made it. They're safe.

For all her strident optimism, Misato must resort to mental gymnastics to convince herself that the series of recent events are real, not imagined. That they really stole into an alien prison ship, that they were captured, that they were rescued and somehow made out with the prizes on the way out. That they were made into a bounty target and there were a thousand and one ships in pursuit and any one could have evaporated them in a single shot but none did, and the Station almost left them, but they made it in the nick of time. They made it against all odds.

She is exhausted, slumped against a wall with an arm over her stomach still catching her breath. Her mind betrays a heady elation, nearly enough to make her cry but instead she finds herself laughing, a cackle, loud and echoing in the hallway, still giddy from the adrenaline. See, even here, she has cheated death. And maybe, maybe it was never the Dead Sea Scrolls that won her battles for her, but herself. Maybe it was all her. ]

Damn. We really did it.

[viperfire]

[ Nasu placed a hand over her heart in a gesture of relief. She didn't seem out of breath, but slightly ... deflated? She seemed smaller, anyway, than she had whilst breaking out of the ship. ]

We did. But were those prizes really worth all the fuss? Particularly the space yacht.

[ Like was it at least a time-traveling space yacht because that shit was GAUDY. ]

Are you all right?

[deployed]

[ Even under more serene circumstances, Misato's mind hummed with adrenaline. Now, in the wake of their frantic escape, she's a livewire. Bellamy's breath catches as their minds brush. It happens without thinking now for him: his attention turns to a member of the nest, and he hooks into their thoughts instinctively. His hand finds her elbow as it had in the club, steadying her as he staves off the urge to laugh in relief. ]

It was touch and go there, for a bit.

[ Not that such tenuous plans were anything new for Bellamy. This wasn't the first and likely wouldn't be the last escape he made by the skin of his teeth. ]

You're not hurt?

[ As if he isn't already certain she isn't harboring an injury. Bellamy's tone is faintly apologetic. The intrusion happens too quickly sometimes for him to stop himself. ]

SHRIL | RAGTAG ESCAPE BAND

[wrackful]

[Murphy wakes with his heartbeat loud in his ears, his skin crawling cold. It's not unusual. Nightmares are common, the Nest has made no difference on that, and there's something familiar in the disorientation of blinking up at the ceiling, sleep and fear a fog slowly parting over his mind.

Except clarity doesn't offer respite. The dread settled heavy in his stomach doesn't dissipate. It knots and turns, demands action, sharp-edged with certainty. He has to move.]

Bellamy.

[Loud, abrupt and urgent in the dark, not even looking over at the other bed. Not truly thinking any more as he rolls out of bed, on his feet, starts yanking clothes on. All that matters is the drive in his head, go go go, bleeding out openly as he pulls hard on the line between him and Bellamy.]

Get up Bellamy, we have to go. Now.

[deployed]

[ Unease had been creeping in around the edges of Bellamy's consciousness even before Murphy snaps to awareness. It had felt like the makings of a nightmare rather than real danger, but the urgency that crackles down the line between them hits like an electric shock. Bellamy bolts groggily upright, scrambling for the gun that isn't there. ]

What's going on?

[ He sounds alert already. His reaction time had only gotten better since landing on the ground. ]

What's happening?

[ Nothing yet; Bellamy can't hear anything approaching and the room is still dark and quiet. It seems safe. Luckily, Bellamy's learned not to trust anything that seems safe. ]

Shepard | OTA

[earthborn]

I. Asteroids
Shepard was already in the cockpit when the announcement went live. The melee around the space-station was like a hive of angry Rachni. Ships careened wildly, firing both blind and with deadly intent. It was bedlam, people converging on the far-side of the local moon in ways both elegant and disasterous, but always dangerous.

Shepard's own ship bobbed and weaved like a drunken bumble-bee to avoid colliding with the dozens of fellow assailants. It wasn't an elegant ship, round and bulging on one side with a gunner's pod, but it did the job. She waited until the last possible moment to open fire, scoring more kills in the chaos than she had any right to. There were a lot more of them than us, and Shepard didn't intend to waive the advantage as she drew up and alongside the Station's advancing bulk, skirting along the event horizon of dying ships with suicidal confidence.

Maybe you see her coming. Maybe you're just stuck in one of the passenger seats. Maybe you've just noticed that there are two Shepards in this ship, and one of them is operating the gunner's pod with a terrifying glee.

Either way, try not to puke. Low gravity and all.



II. Galaga
Living in space, you learned one thing if nothing else: the law of conservation of momentum. An object in motion stays in motion, unless acted on by an outside force, and every few seconds the canon on Shepard's little ship accelerated a slug to a force that would crumple hull and kill on impact. It was true what they told you in basic: Sir Isaac Newton really was the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space.

And the other half of that was good ol' Murphy: if something could go wrong, it would, and in the worst fashion. It was just as Shepard had dodged out into a flanking position, when was drawing alongside one of the "rescue" shuttles bearing the so-called heist team that it happened. An impact.

It wasn't even as if she were hit by a gun. The broken half of a ship, blasted apart by the stray shot of an over-eager "competitor" careened at an odd angle and by pure luck managed to sheer off the gunner's pot from Shepard's lumpy, inelegant ship.

From the inside, it was chaos, blaring sirens and rushing air until the bulkhead door locked down, and Shepard got back to the vital business of piloting, sans firepower.

From the outside, where all could see, the impact was less anti-climactic. The hull tore, the canons stripped away and spinning. There was a fireball as the escaping oxygen ignited, briefly burned, and was gone-- and behind it, writhing in the void between ships, helmetless and dying, hung Commander Jane Shepard.


III. Space Invaders
In the private, self-satisfied silence of a job well finished and a death narrowly avoided, Shepard doesn't mind a comfortable silence. After all, the quiet in the landing bay of the Hangar isn't exactly unusual-- so far as she knows, anyways.

Everyone's disembarking, and it's remarkably casual, all things considered. No need to hustle on the paperwork, when there's no paperwork to file. Cathaway's hardly the kind of lady who needs a form filled out in triplicate to justify ever bullet fired. The only thing on anyone's mind was securing their ships and watching for the Jump; praying, for the Jump.

Without it, they'd be screwed.

But, into that tense, companionable quiet after the storm Shepard offers one simple observation, made without examination, direct from mind to voice without the intervention of common sense, or decency:

"We should have sex."



IV. Wildcard
Hit me up with your own idea!

II!

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ There is no moment of pause when Sam realizes he recognizes the woman outside the ship, no shock of frozen horror. Sam is not a man who responds to this kind of terror with stalled panic, he's one of action. Even as Rhodes and Riley's faces flash at the back of his mind, as he remembers it's like I was up there just to watch - he's moving, darting across the ship to grab for a space suit.

At the same time, he surges across his connection with Shepard, crashing through the shields he helped her build. They're more connected than not these days, but he hasn't gone as deep as he had the time he'd found the warning from the Protheans, the time they felt each other die, until now. Now he floods her, a whirl of feathers like the actual bird he's named for flying through her mind - fear determination hold on hold on hold on hold on. ]

III

[sistershoggoth]

[ Annie appraises her, mussed, sweaty, tired. ]

You're a little big for my taste, but yeah whatever.

iii because: because

[lavelly]

Lavellan's both exhausted, and entirely confused about what actually happened over the last several hours aside from the fact that they all survived against seemingly impossible odds, and it involved a very, very high-speed chase involving a lot of dodging and barrel rolls and it's a miracle he hasn't emptied the contents of his stomach several times over. He's sweaty and nauseated and altogether feels no shame in admitting he's not particularly attractive at the moment. And not least of all, the last time he spoke with Shepard they'd parted on not particularly amiable terms.

So he's fairly certain he had to have misheard what Shepard just said, but for the life of him he can't imagine what else it could have been.

"Sorry?"