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Post by Huntress on Oct 29, 2008 16:38:32 GMT -5
"Huntress, you can give the order for when to leave, after that understand that you are on my ship."
Hunty shrugged, settling down in one of the seats. "I'm fully aware that this is your ship, therefore it's up to you when to start. A vessel's captain is always the superior aboard that vessel, no matter who else is on that vessel. Although I'd appreciate it if you didn't do anything that might come back to bite you later and such..."
"Could we just go?" Bloody Mary groaned, sinking lower on her shoulder. "I don't like this place."
"It's not about to get any better," Hunty said.
"All the more reason to get this bit over with." The rest of the gang was clustered tightly around Hunty's feet. Meepits, like most other animals, have a general dislike for new situations, more so in their case because they were capable of reasoned thinking and could predict what's to come, which wasn't looking any better than the present. "I mean, we could just pop off to the Meepit Realms when push comes to shove, but I'm not that desperate yet."
Hunty paused. "You can go to the Meepit Realms?" Come to think of it, there was no reason why they couldn't, since the rabies didn't seem to interfere with general everyday meepit activities and the Realms were second nature for Rider's meepits, but she'd never seen anyone in her gang actually use the portals that led there, so she'd never given it more thought than that.
"We can," Bloody Mary said gruffly, "but we don't. Not without dire need. And we'll leave it at that."
He slid off the shoulder and landed in Hunty's lap, as a general compromise between sticking with the captain and being closer to his gang.
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Post by Kengplant on Oct 29, 2008 19:18:41 GMT -5
Keng grinned at Huntress slyly, then turned around and flicked to the inertial dampener controls, and turned the setting down by about 12%: safe enough that no one would splat, but enough that they'd be able to feel the liftoff and momentum more than a little.
"Ok, hold onto something everyone" she warned as she hit the hover and retracted the landing gear. Then, after a slow turn around towards the entrance, she hit the thrust and a few rodents did a flip, while Keng laughed almost manically at being able to feel the speed. It was good to forget her troubles for just the moment and have a little fun.
"Whew! Everyone still have their lunches back there?" she asked looking over her shoulder with a smile as they buzzed through the atmosphere. It took only a few short minutes to break clear into open space, where they were promptly greeted with a greater sparkle of stars than could ever be seen from the planets surface. Very shiny stars that seemed so close it looked like you could touch them.
Keng flicked on the autopilot (which the computer announced the successful activation of) and got up so she could give everyone the run down. "We'll reach the landing bay in 15 minutes, 20-ish minutes. I'll be dropping you all off at the civilian bay. The bulk of the security there will be a bit heavier than what you walked through in the space port. ... I'm not sure if the meepits and weasles will be counted as pets or their own persons... err.. creatures... er.. anyways, Zylaa, if you can I'd qualify the weasels as pets. Having that many little self responsible thieves around won't be too forgivable. Natural tendencies of magpie-like creatures is far more excusable. The meepits are probably safe as self thinking creatures, you'll have to declare the rabies though. There will be a little extra paperwork: you can probably get them to condense it to one page, but it's better than walking through the scanner and getting the full medical inspection and numerous accusations.
While you're doing that I'll take my ship around to the personell's docking bay then..." Keng's smile faded... "then I need to check the medical wing... I'll try to meet up with you all in the civilian area's main food court about two hours after dropping you off."
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Post by Rider on Oct 30, 2008 9:05:41 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]Rider couldn't blame Hunty's Meepits. The Meepit Realms were a singularly freakish place. Meepits were intelligent, certainly as intelligent as humans, but they understood things on a different level. Hunty's Meepits were closer to a human level, or at least that's what Rider thought. They knew that the Meepit Realms were nothing more that a 3-D Etch-a-Sketch drawing. Done by an autistic kid who drew the same tree over and over again. Oh yeah, and the ceiling had a habit of threatening to collapse.
Keng set the ship to liftoff and Rider had to hang on to Ventratta to keep him from flying out of her pocket. "Oooh, you've got a scupture piece here? Postmodern art." She reached out to touch it but was highly disappointed when her hand when right through it. She waved her hand through it a few more times. She took Ventratta out of her pocket when the jostling stopped and made him wave his paw through it.
"Fascenating..."
Somewhere behind her, video game lights flashed, and from a fold in the recesses of space-time, Mittens knew his uncle was near an arcade. He teleported in and took off like a little pink shot.
"... Raise your hand if you saw that coming." [/glow]
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Post by Zylaa on Oct 30, 2008 15:33:57 GMT -5
"... are they... do you think... will they actually get off afterward?" Keng asked.
"'Course they will. Spacefleet is shiny too, isn't it? They'll start swarming over that instead." Zylaa thought about this. "Or maybe not. That wouldn't really help our subtlety."
Then Keng gave the warning for liftoff, and Zylaa looked around quickly for something to hold on to, failed, and promptly fell over as the ship sped into liftoff. "Whoops," she said, feeling the lurch of the acceleration. But as the ship broke past the atmosphere, she stood up once more to look out the windows. She stared at the NTWF, splayed out behind them, shrinking into the distance as they continued to soar. The stars, too, were beautiful, sparkling all around them, bright enough that most of the weasels started to crowd around the windows too. As Keng began to lay out the plan, she reluctantly tore her eyes away from the sight and looked back into the ship.
"We'll reach the landing bay in 15 minutes, 20-ish minutes. I'll be dropping you all off at the civilian bay. The bulk of the security there will be a bit heavier than what you walked through in the space port. ... I'm not sure if the meepits and weasles will be counted as pets or their own persons... err.. creatures... er.. anyways, Zylaa, if you can I'd qualify the weasels as pets. Having that many little self responsible thieves around won't be too forgivable. Natural tendencies of magpie-like creatures is far more excusable," Keng said.
"Agreed. They're very magpie-like anyway," said Zylaa with a shrug.
"I'll try to meet up with you all in the civilian area's main food court about two hours after dropping you off."
"What will we be doing in those two hours, then?" Zylaa asked.
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Post by Kat on Oct 31, 2008 3:54:47 GMT -5
Kat looked around. The place was full of fancy levers, buttons, screens, and everything else a spaceship would have and more. And obviously, nothing was powered my magic. Really, this was a more technologically advanced era; it would be a sad, sad world if people continued relying on nothing but magic.
"What will we be doing in those two hours, then?"
"They better have an arcade or two," said Kat, grinning. "There has to be."
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Post by Rider on Oct 31, 2008 9:53:23 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]Mittens' ears perked up. A New Challenger Has Appeared.
He jumped on the pause button and squeaked at Kat. It was something along the lines of "dibs on Astaroth, because Keng didn't download Yoda."
He quickly finished the battle he was on, stepping on the buttons with lightning speed. To a Meepit of his size, every game was a game of DDR.
"Ring Out."
The jerk-face Magus Sisters opened a portal and started singing the Final Fantasy victory theme. Mittens shook his tiny fists at them, squeaking that this was Soul Calibur. He invited Kat to take a seat.[/glow]
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Post by Kengplant on Nov 2, 2008 0:32:30 GMT -5
"Ok, we're coming in for a landing." Keng announced as they approached the landing bay. "It means I get to use this button." she grinned as she gleefully hit a green triangle next to a door. In the middle of the room appeared what looked to be a 1960s flight attendant.
"Hello. I'm you're flight attendant. We will be coming in for a landing in approximately 3 minutes. In the event of an emergency exits are located at the back of the ship, to the left, and the trap door below me. You are to head to the escape shuttle immediately in an orderly fashion. In the event of a crash landing there are seats located along the walls with safety belts. To do these up..." this continued for the full 3 minutes it took to land, by which time of course it was totally useless if a real emergency were to occur. When the flight attendant finished the hologram disappeared.
"Hmm... I think I need to work on the timing of that..." Keng reflected as she opened the door to let them into the landing bay. "Follow the signs, they'll get you to customs and all that fun stuff."
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Post by Kat on Nov 2, 2008 7:34:04 GMT -5
"All right, you're on!" said Kat, plopping into the seat Mittens had vacated. For some odd reason, she thought of choosing Cervantes instead of any female character, which was one of her gaming habits. "My dad and uncle play this game, and - "
After trying to relearn the controls, she lost the battle. To a girl wearing a rather revealing outfit whose name escaped her, but that was not important. What was important was trying to keep your dignity when you lost a game that a Meepit easily won.
"Crud. Shush you all, I lack practice, all right?"
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Post by Rider on Nov 2, 2008 12:42:11 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]"Crud. Shush you all, I lack practice, all right?"
Mittens made a noise that could only be described as chortling. Ventratta opened a portal back to the Meepit Realms and practically shoved his unruly nephew back in. Rider was only bringing one pet to the Spacefleet and didn't need to fill out paperwork for another.
"Follow the signs, they'll get you to customs and all that fun stuff."
"Fuuuuuuun."
there was a lot of walking, a lot of paperworking, and thankfully a floating timeline. Rider decided to row it towards shore a little.[/glow]
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Post by Fraze on Nov 2, 2008 23:18:40 GMT -5
"That's alright. My days have been long too, but for the opposite reason. I want to do something, but all Spacefleet is doing right now is setting up trade relations, and I don't think I'd be much of a diplomat. Sure, I have personal training, I train Siber, and a few other things, but it's the same thing every day." Fraze grinned a bit. "If you're bored, want some of my work? The worst part about diplomacy is all the diplomats--other than that, it's not all that bad. I kind of know what you mean, though--things have been quiet lately, not too much to do." Having an innate understanding of the laws of literary irony, Fraze knew that he had just cursed himself. He returned to his malt, drinking it slowly but constantly, when an only recently familiar person came up to him. "Your suit, sir. Sorry if I kept you, it's just annoying when you have to ask the computer for someone's location repeatedly because they keep moving." Fraze looked up at Brian. "Ahh, thank you," he said, taking the cup. "I hope it helped?"
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Post by Huntress on Nov 3, 2008 12:05:47 GMT -5
In Hunty's earnest opinion, space travel wasn't half as bad as she'd expected. There were some rough spots, but those weren't worse than some of the ugliest storms she'd sailed through and in fact reminded her of the time back when they'd been caught in a maelstrom near the shores of Shannonderry and very nearly lost half the rigging and had to replace the jib-boom at the end of that adventure in that small village, what was it called again...?
She spent most of the journey recalling old memories and trying to remember place names. It proved to be a very time-consuming pastime.
Bloody Mary, who had long decided that space travel was just as bad as he'd expected and then some, spent the entire journey in her lap, saying 'gyerk' at regular intervals. Luckily he got most of his old self back by the time they reached the landing bay and was therefore able to fully launch into a battle with the unsuspecting customs workers.
Hunty, being the last to leave out of pure habit, stopped at the opened door, ignoring the well-recognizable coarse voice coming from the other end of the landing bay: "...and I take it that you're familiar with the Code of Rights, kid? The international one? The one on your desk right now, that small blue book? Do check out chapter 45, will you? The bit about discriminating on the basis of medical condition?"
The captain turned to look at Keng.
"Well, you seem to be getting along fine up here?" she said, as a question as much as a rhetorical statement. "They say that you can take a pirate away from the sea but you can never take the sea away from a pirate... and you always were a good pirate."
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Post by Kengplant on Nov 3, 2008 13:06:06 GMT -5
"There are other seas on other planets." Keng calmly told Huntress. Her face quirked into a little bit of a smile as she continued, "One was rainbow coloured. Another smelled like peaches. Another sounded like chimes, which was more annoying then pretty after a while."
This was a conversation Keng wasn't keen on having at the moment. Largely because she knew the question behind it and she was undecided on it. Keng looked over her shoulder into her ship then back out at the crew as it filled out into the port. Then again perhaps she had decided... but just wasn't ready to admit it.
"I'll see you in the food court. I've been away from the medical bay to long now and need to check on my troops and the refugees."
With a small bow of her head towards Huntress, Keng turned her back and jogged back up the ramp into the ship and was away just as soon as everyone had gotten off.
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Post by Rider on Nov 3, 2008 16:19:09 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]"Well, you certainly picked a good time to ask her that one," Rider said with a small smile. "I mean, I'm no good at diplomacizing with anything that isn't small, pink and squeaky, so perhaps I'm not one to talk, but all the same..." She let the words hang in the air.
"Well, the possible cause of Keng's reluctance to answer should be coming soon, no? But I also believe there was mention of food."
Rider wandered in the general direction of the food court, wondering what a sea that smelled like peaches would be like... [/glow]
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Post by Kat on Nov 3, 2008 19:43:28 GMT -5
Rider was walking toward the food court, and Kat couldn't help tagging along; her stomach was growling. "Hey, hey, wait up!" When she finally caught up, she whispered to Rider, "Do I look mage-y enough, or posing as a mage ambassador won't be necessary after all?'
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Post by Rider on Nov 3, 2008 20:05:21 GMT -5
Rider was walking toward the food court, and Kat couldn't help tagging along; her stomach was growling. "Hey, hey, wait up!" When she finally caught up, she whispered to Rider, "Do I look mage-y enough, or posing as a mage ambassador won't be necessary after all?' [glow=red,2,300]"It can't hurt to look like a member of both guilds, which you in fact are." She examined Kat closely. Her eyes objected. "You pass the glitter test. And as far as I'm concerned, that's the only test you need to pick out a mage." A variety of smells hit the pair like a tidal wave, some appetizing, some nauseating and some downright foreign. "... Please just tell me they have fish and rum."[/glow]
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