Fierce New World- Mission Start!

[voidtreckermods]

"Good Morning passengers. Today is day six of the month of Jelly." The voice echoes through the train as passengers wake up in their beds. Not long afterwards their SCA’s glow with the colour of the void and a holographic image will appear.

Preparation and Arrival

They have a short time to prepare for their mission, enough time to read their briefs, make decisions, meet in their teams and gather anything they may need.

A few hours later there is another announcement. "Shortly arriving on System #2207385. All passengers get ready to disembark. Next stop world #2207385. Exit from void in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one."

The train judders as it leaves the void, the colours from the windows turn into the blackness of space but quickly white as the train descends into the entrance of the biosphere.

The doors of the train open and passengers can enter the large white-walled holding bay. Currently, they are the only vehicle inside. There are four large doors around the bay each labelled with where they lead. Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

The doors open easily, and their SCA’s show a basic route, though the non-linear nature of the sectors mean that obstacles will need to be navigated. While they are in a closed world, there is a day and night cycle: the panels far up above are designed to make it seem like there is a natural sky, brightening and dimming every ten hours.

Red/Summer

Empty Streets

Wide streets divide sealed-off factories and manufacturing pods that tower up towards the ‘sky’. It is hot here, though the fumes from the factories are vented out, leaving the air breathable if overly warm.

Sometimes the pods are not yet finished, empty shells that can be sheltered in. There are also stations for living, with plumbing and basic amenities scattered through the sector. Places to rest as they move towards the center and the Great-Summer that they seek.

Helpmates

Where factories are still being built they will find Helpmates, operating machinery or moving materials.

They will not pause in their tasks for long but are programmed to answer questions so can be drawn into a conversation. Or, if the Voidtreckers are unfortunate, they will find those that are malfunctioning turning on them as they approach.

They aren’t too difficult to fight, but can do some damage with the machinery if they manage to take a Voidtrecker by surprise. They can be fought with weapons or magic, or for those that think to use the panels they can be shut down outright.

Wild Weather

Though warm, the corridors remain a constant temperature that is not too unpleasant for people. For the most part. Unfortunately, due to the malfunctioning state of things routes may become impassable. Boiling air, freezing blasts, electricity crackling across a pathway.

Their SCA’s do a good job of warning them, allowing them to change direction or shelter in nearby buildings.

Purple/Autumn

Exploring

The Autumn sector is the least complete of the sectors, with shells of habitation pods and not much else. No one is expected to live here until nearing the end of construction, and so the pods are unfurnished, many missing doors, some missing internal walls.

Outside the streets are wide and clearly made to be pleasant to walk on; it is airy, bright and spacious, if a bit eerie due to the quiet.

There are panels on the walls, to call Helpmates to appear. Here they are primarily for helping citizens, giving directions and offering aid.

Malfunctions

Since there are more helpmates there is more risk of them malfunctioning. They attack with or without weapons, using any tools they can pick up to attack. They can be fought with weapons or magic, or for those that think to use the panels they can be shut down.

They won’t chase people into the houses, their privacy programming preventing them from doing so.

Turned Around

The roads seem simple, built in a grid pattern around the houses. However, whatever is going wrong here is affecting the very streets themselves. Sometimes there will be a wall where there wasn’t before or roads go in circles. Sometimes they find themselves at a dead end, trapped until structures shift again.

Their SCA’s do their best to keep up but it can take a while for them to reroute and by the time they do, that path might be blocked too!

Blue/Spring

Patchwork Forest

The Spring sector houses the hydroponics and pastoral sections. It alternates between grazing land and more heavily forested areas with rows of pine-like trees in a checkerboard pattern, with empty plots interspersed. Walkways divide each square, but all squares appear able to move about as required, as though on a conveyor system.

There are clear walkways to avoid stepping on any newly growing plants. In the grazing land live flocks of camelid creatures resembling alpacas with blueish wool, on average a metre and a half tall at the shoulders. Helpmates appear here as if on a timer to feed the animals and tend to plants.

Destruction


If the Helpmates here malfunction they attack anyone nearby, cause havoc to any farming equipment and frightening the animals.

They can be fought with weapons or magic, or for those that think to use the panels they can be shut down. The panels here are less obvious than they are in the more urban sectors, low to the ground, looking almost like energy panels. But once they know what to look for they will be able to use them to shut down the Helpmates.

Stampede

Frightened animals are likely to flee and unfortunately in this case it means rampaging across the grazing land to the newly growing trees.

They will need to be calmed, returned to their grazing lands and the plants restored. Or it might be that the Voidtreckers can stop the Helpmates before the creatures get too spooked.

Orange/Winter

Exploring

The Winter sector’s primary concern is life support. Huge banks of air scrubbers form artificial cliffs, while other sections are tanks filled with water in varying stages of processing or recycling.

The paths here are a lot narrower than they are in other areas, sometimes requiring moving between pipes or scrambling over layers of railing.

There doesn’t seem to be any easy or straightforward path through the sector, their SCA takes them on wild winding routes through the machinery.

Help or Hindrance

The fluctuating temperatures here are causing problems with many of the pipes, several sections are flooded, others are in danger of being so.

There are patch kits in easily opened panels, designed to be used by the helpmates and indeed there are many helpmates out.

But some are less helpful, those that are malfunctioning are more likely to cause more damage than they are there to fix. They will attack any one who tries to interfere with them. They can be fought with weapons or magic, or for those that think to use the panels they can be shut down.

Patch Job

Once the malfunctioning Helpmates are dealt with the pipes still need to be fixed. The patch kits do not have any instructions but are simple enough that anyone with a basic knowledge of how to fix things should be able to figure them out- though the more knowledge and expertise they have the better the fix!

For those that don’t, many of the jobs will need more than one person and so for those that don’t mind taking instructions they will find an extra pair of hands is always welcome.

Comments

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Oh?" And Koumyou does look around the camp as he nibbles on a slice of the fruit, picturing what Devero describes as best as he can without ever having actually seen an exo. Devero had once told him the size of his, at least. The basic shape of it.

"Perhaps they were."

[subcircuits]

"You think?" he asks wistfully, then laughs at himself. "They weren't, of course. They're just machines. But when you spend that much time with a machine like that-- when you learn it and it learns you..." He trails off, then chuckles again. "It's hard not to get sentimental."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Why not?" The priest looks over at Devero, and raises an eyebrow.

"Babysitter may not have a consciousness, per se. It may not have a soul of its own as we may understand it, but that does not mean it hasn't been imbued with some sort of..." Koumyou gestures vaguely with one partially-covered hand, "spirit."

[subcircuits]

"The ghost in the machine," Devero says slowly. "You'd hear the real veteran jockeys talking about stuff like that, sometimes; the ones who'd been piloting the same rig for years. They'd say that there's a part of them that stays in their exo whether they're interfaced to it or not."

He shakes his head. "I wasn't in my Scorpion long enough to get it. But with Babysitter..." He trails off, and focuses on the knife and the fruit in his hand for a minute. Eventually, he says, "If it does have a spirit, it's a little slice of mine." He lifts another slice of avocado free, as if to illustrate.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou smiles at that, "Yes, it would have to be, wouldn't it?" And he leans his shoulder against Devero's, "I hope to meet it someday."

And then he digs in his sleeve for his cigarettes, pulling one free and lighting it with his fingers like he normally does. It's a nice night full of clean air, which is the best time to smoke.

"You know, a Sanzo usually is supposed to travel alone, because we're such beacons for danger. It's very novel to be more of an asset than a liability, for once!"

[subcircuits]

Devero leans right back against him, the muscles in his arm and shoulder flexing minutely under the blue material of the borrowed armor he's wearing. He finishes up the avocado and divvies the remaining pieces up mostly evenly. He hands Koumyou his share in the natural bowl formed by the fruit's thick skin.

"I hope so too," he says softly. If his voice is a little melancholic, well, can you blame a guy who left part of his soul behind on his own world?

"That must have been very isolating," he says frankly, looking over at Koumyou. Now his knee nudges the priest's in addition to his shoulder. He starts out sweetly enough-- "You're definitely an asset here. In fact, I'd say the only way you'd be a liability is if you try that cheerleading shit again tomorrow." --but ends with a toothy grin.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Being a Sanzo is extremely isolating," Koumyou agrees without any particular sadness over it. It's just kind of a fact of life. "Being a Sanzo with two sutras? It was the same risk to attack me, as I can only kill a person once. But twice the reward, if they succeeded."

He'd been a Very Big Target.

He holds the avocado Devero's handed him, but focuses on taking a deep drag from his cigarette first. Then he offers said cigarette over, too, in case the bigger man wants any, before exhaling the smoke up at the artificial sky.

"...I am definitely going to be doing the cheerleading shit again. It's too funny not to." To him, at least. Which is what counts most in his antics!

[subcircuits]

"So you were a prime target. You must have had to defend yourself constantly..."

--Yeah, he could definitely use a drag on that, especially standing at the edge of the gulf of Koumyou's past as he is. He takes the cigarette, grimacing a little at the first harsh bite of the tobacco as he usually does. That doesn't keep him from holding it in his lungs, and he hands the cigarette back as he trickles it out slow--

Actually, no, he laughs the rest of it out, before going into a coughing fit. He has to thump himself in the chest a couple of times to try and get his lungs to chill out. "Of course you are," he says fondly. "Hope you're ready for that karma to come back around at you tomorrow, then."

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou laughs lightly, and then blows smoke rings toward the fire after his next drag, holding the cigarette where Devero can reclaim it if he wants. And, "I think I can shoulder that karma."

He only falls when it's funny anyway.

The priest looks at his SCA on his other wrist, and the tiny map that shows their progress toward the target. "This is definitely going to take a few days. I suppose that's better than when we landed on Nion and only had a few hours to reach our targets or the world would end."

[subcircuits]

Devero doesn't reach for the cigarette right away, munching on his avocado for the moment. He doesn't actually know enough about the concept to comment meaningfully.

"I think you're right," he agrees quietly. "Not that I'm complaining about the distance we made today with this group, but there's still a lot of distance yet to cover.

"...Tell me about Nion? The world-ending part? I've only gotten pieces of that story."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"There was a meteor only a few hours away from hitting the planet, when we arrived. We had to get to the control stations and start up the planet's shielding system before impact."

Koumyou balances the little 'bowl' of avocado on his leg so that he can pluck out a slice to nibble on with his free hand.

"There were three of the big stations, blue and red went to one and the other two teams each had one. If any of the teams had failed, I assume we'd have all woken up in the luggage car."

[subcircuits]

"Rust and ruin," he swears softly. "That's--" But what word, or even words, could encompass it? Being sent on a mission with such a slim margin of error, facing the possibility of an entire world dying but for your intervention, and having only hours in which to succeed...

He actually shivers a little, palpable through the places where their bodies touch, and reaches for the cigarette.

Only after another drag does he feel like he has the fortitude to ask, "But that planet died anyway, didn't it?"

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou blinks over at him.

"What? No, what gave you that impression? We got the barriers back up, spent a week ensuring they would stay up on their own, and even took down a group of strip-miner saboteurs who wanted it dead for profit."

It had been a very successful mission, over-all! Even if the big show-down with the enemy had been a bloodier fight than anyone had expected.

[subcircuits]

Okay, now Devero's confused. "I thought that was the-- which planet died, then? Didn't one of the mission worlds get destroyed?"

Apparently, the notes he's been taking for himself haven't been good enough.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"I mean, I think I remember hearing something about that? But it wasn't Nion."

That much, at least, he's sure of. Nion had been in great shape when they'd pulled away in the train.

"I've only been here a few weeks longer than you, this is my second mission."

[subcircuits]

He's silent for a moment, right eye squinting closed as he looks with the left through his Interface. He balances his avocado bowl on his thigh in much the same way Koumyou's done with his own and sticks the cigarette between his lips so he has both hands free. He brings up the literal note he's been keeping for himself, the one where he'd been documenting what he's learned about the planets and missions, and edits his file with his lips pressed into a tight line.

He dismisses the updated doc with a swipe of his hand, then uses the same hand to pinch the cigarette out of his mouth and offer it back to Koumyou.

"Had that right messed up," he grumbles. "Don't know how that happened. --Good to know your first mission was a success, though." He hopes his will be, too.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Maybe because the person, Halo, we tried to rescue did die?" It's not like the mission was a flawless success. Although as per usual, someone dying despite best efforts to prevent it... doesn't even register as any kind of unforeseen event, to the Sanzo priest.

If anything, Koumyou had been surprised she hadn't been gunned down right as they reached her. Or had turned out to be a saboteur, waiting to plant a knife between his ribs while he held up a protective barrier around them.

He'd genuinely expected either, on some level.

"Maaah, if you thought the last mission was a complete failure, I bet that didn't help your worries any." Poor guy! Koumyou leans against him as he takes a drag of the returned cigarette. "I think we're doing fine so far."

Even if it's mostly been walking, they're making decent time.

[subcircuits]

"Mm. That might have been it." Hearing about that, first at the meeting and then later from Koumyou, has certainly made an impression on him. Get that mixed up with the knowledge that one of the worlds they'd been tasked to save had been annihilated, and, well, it's a reasonable misunderstanding to make.

He slumps gratefully back against Koumyou. "It really didn't," he admits, then chuckles ruefully at himself. "This has been a lot less... hectic, so far, than I had imagined."

And that is a huge relief.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"It might ramp up," Koumyou points out, and leans his head sideways on Devero's shoulder for a moment. "But if it gets hectic... just know I won't be far from you."

Just as he'd seemingly been tethered to the other man during camp setup, periodically wandering close to check in before venturing off to continue his work.

[subcircuits]

"That makes me feel like I might just be able to handle it," Devero says with a hint of a smile. He puts his arm around Koumyou and squeezes him gratefully.

"Thanks for letting me come with you," he murmurs more seriously. "It's-- it's reassuring, to know you've got my six."

[its_dad_sanzo]

And Koumyou just tips his head up and plants a smooch on him.

They've got this.