Redemption (Rated T) - A Pirate/Fleet RP

[Zylaa]

"Wait a minute... that's Goosh?" Zylaa looked up to see Jina coming towards her in the hallway.

"Yeah," said Zylaa. "He was bitten, got sick, and suddenly turned all sparkly and attractive and fanged. While I was... ah.... strategically evaluating the situation, the weasels all noticed his sparkliness and bowled him over. And then, he used his powers of sexiness-- don't ask-- and the weasels fainted." Zylaa gently prodded the closest one with her foot. "I'm quite tempted to just leave them there."

She turned at the sound of something squeaking behind her, and saw Ventratta, who was making a pictogram of some sort. It was pretty high quality, considering it was drawn by a meepit. Her first thought was that Ventratta meant that lots more sparkly yurbles were attacking, but then she reconsidered, and glanced up at the clock... dangit.

"Ah, Jina, we'd better get back to the crew," Zylaa said. "The demons are due to attack again any minute now. Could you lead the way back?" she asked Ventratta. As he led them down the corridor, Zylaa cast one last look back at Goosh, or at least, at the pile of white fur that marked where Goosh was.

He'll be fine, she thought. He's got 300 weasels to protect him. And if he could shake off the weasels and come, she wasn't about to stop him. Maybe they could use him to make the demons swoon and give up the fight.

[Amneiger]

"Ranged weapons were pretty ineffective, I had to rely mainly on melee combat."

"We need to find a way to slow down the demons if we'll be using the shields. See if you can find some flashbangs or netguns. Would grenades or other explosives work? And is anybody doing anything about the other Leraye and Speck near here? I've lost them on the cameras and I'm not opening these doors until I can be sure they aren't going to be able to get in."

[Rider]

[glow=red,2,300]Leraye did not, in fact, flinch, but this has got to be payback for godmoding Speck in a similar manner a dozen pages ago. Leraye was still wearing that infuriating smile. Rider wanted to backhand him just for this. At least Cyborg had looked a little nervous when he was prisoner. This display was just... inhuman.

But then again, Leraye wasn't human, was he?

"For all we know he is working with the demons and collaborating with them to take over or destroy 'fleet."

"Really," Leraye said, gesturing at his nurse outfit, "Do I look like a guy with a plan?"

"We will take it under consideration,"

Leraye couldn't stop his eyes from lighting up a little. To him, this was as good as a yes.

---

"We will take it under consideration."

"It's as good as a no, sir," Kyvr said.

"Keep firing," said the High Warmaster. "Tell them that we will not cease fire until they agree to our terms."

"Is that invisible girl with you? Tell her she can't hide from us."

The breath caught in Kyvr's throat. They didn't mean... they couldn't know about...

Schzain was considering the number of people who knew her secret. No, it was impossible. Red, this far away from her proud people and her proud seas? Sure, a dozen or so people knew that Schzain could become invisible, but only Red knew how. She remembered the many times she and her most loyal partner went out for breakfast the morning after a successful heist, discussing the technical details, the perfect precision, the music of the moment. She and Red had worked together like a symphony.

Another human had betrayed her. Naturally. Isn't that what humans do?

Kyvr's voice sounded a little more hostile. "I will not have you threatening my individual soldiers." The words sounded silly even to him, but he knew exactly why he was saying it.

"I will give you humans one last chance." It was "I" now, not "we." "You can still avoid violence. I am sending you a set of co-ordinates. They lead to the summit of a small plateau, about ten miles from Spacefleet. Bring Leraye there unharmed. He may have an escort of no more than two. They must be unarmed. We will abide by the same terms. Only two demons will be sent to receive him, and they will have no weapons. We will cease fire for... half an hour. If we do not have him by then, there will be war."

Click.

1070, 5006. An almost completely sheer rock face. Not a lot of room at the top of the plateau. Enough to make any negotiator nervous. [/glow]

[Omni]

The scientists were still there.

"…Did it work?" asked Brian.

Jaliv looked at the readings. "The connection appears to have been severed when the theta waves hit. The bike's energy is no longer steaming outside."

Some sighs of relief, and even some cheering. "It worked!" said Brian enthusiastically. "I can't believe that worked!"

Fesserfa smiled and laughed, then said, more seriously, "We should keep that in mind. It seems altered time before, it might do it again-"

"…And this might just stop it!" Finished Brian. "Bring it on, bike. This time, we're ready!"

----------

Ethan waited, watching through the security cameras as the monkey drew closer. At the right moment, he jumped out in front of the monkey. The monkey made a quick 180, and ran back. Ethan followed. "Siber!" he shouted. "…Speak!"

Siber gave a loud bark as he stood in the monkey's way. The monkey, startled by the loud noise and the sharp teeth, he turned around again only to realize he was trapped.

"Good boy," said Ethan, taking the opportunity to grab the monkey by the arm. The monkey protested, but Ethan managed to hold on, grab his other arm, and check his hands and feet.

No gem.

'Fraze, this is Marine Ethan. The monkey does not have the gem. Repeat, I have lost track of the gem!'

[Kat]

"I've got a few still images saved from the combat. Can anyone with good knowledge of magic take a look at them? The more we know about their magic capabilities, the better. From what very little I know about magic, it seems like shield spells are usually done by single people at the middle of the spell. If we can identify these people--if there are any--that'd be especially useful."

And this is the part where Kat mysteriously speaks up after being so silent and sneaky and ninja-like, so very out of character.

"Eh? I'm no super-duper archmage, but I'll see what I can make of them, Fraze. Although I can't guarantee any aura tracing if all I see are images."

[Huntress]

Hunty's gaze followed the black gem like a cat watching a mouse hurry across the floor and hide in its hole. Her eyes narrowed as the gem went into Fraze's possession, but she didn't complain for the time being. There'd be time to deal with this later. In fact, it was probably better this way. She knew well how possession of a magical gem tended to get random people to attack you, and this time she didn't have the blarf to back her up.

She glanced at Bloody Mary. All things considered, she didn't even have to. The meepit was looking absentminded now, still lodged on Fraze's shoulder and playing through his skinsuit's more general functions, but the glance she sent back to the captain was as sharp and attentive as ever. He was keeping an eye on the gem. And, of course, also on the bearer. Which he had intended to do anyway, until Hunty's brain was back on the tracks of common sense, so this made things easier.

"I think I just found Radio Moscow," he said. "Cap'n?"

"Yes?"

"You're clanking."

Hunty grinned at him. Her corset belts were designed so that anything attached to any of those belts was easily accessible. As it was, all of them were occupied, mostly by small grenades and fletchettes. She looked like a computer game show-all-weapons cheat code.

"Negotiations on neutral ground?" she asked. "Works for me. If you'll find me something I can breathe with while out there, I think we should be able to settle this with minimal collateral and maximal efficiency. After all, diplomacy was invented so that difficult questions could be settled without spilling blood, am I right?"

"This wasn't so bad," said Bloody-Silvery Mary. "Now let's try again, and this time like you really mean it."

[Fraze]

"Eh? I'm no super-duper archmage, but I'll see what I can make of them, Fraze. Although I can't guarantee any aura tracing if all I see are images."
"Well, worth a try anyway," Fraze said. "If you'll excuse the intrusion..."
He walked over to Kat, and placed one hand over her eyes. From here, he showed her the images he had saved. "Is this working?"

"We need to find a way to slow down the demons if we'll be using the shields," came Amneiger's voice over comm. The message was audible to all present. "See if you can find some flashbangs or netguns. Would grenades or other explosives work? And is anybody doing anything about the other Leraye and Speck near here? I've lost them on the cameras and I'm not opening these doors until I can be sure they aren't going to be able to get in."
"Ooh yes, flashbangs would be perfect. They should be in...those boxes over there." Fraze pointed with his foot, since he was still giving Kat a slideshow. "Careful using them, though, they're enough to make anyone blind and deaf for several minutes. Yell 'Fire in the hole!' when you set one off. And if you hear that being yelled, cover your ears and close your eyes if you value either or both of those senses. Bloody Mary shouldn't have a problem, the suit will block out harmful levels of light and noise. Probably. Still a good idea to do it anyway.
"I'm not so sure about other explosives, but I'm sure they can't hurt. Send out a squad to search for Speck and Leraye, we've got a bit too much to deal with as it is."

'Fraze, this is Marine Ethan. The monkey does not have the gem. Repeat, I have lost track of the gem!' Came a panicked voice over the comm.
"Don't worry, Ethan. We just received that gem. It is safely contained.

A reply from the demons. "I will not have you threatening my individual soldiers." Fraze allowed himself a grin--this was good. He had gotten under their skin. That meant he had an advantage.

"I will give you humans one last chance."
Fraze noticed the change from plural to singular. Now, clearly, it was personal.
"You can still avoid violence. I am sending you a set of co-ordinates. They lead to the summit of a small plateau, about ten miles from Spacefleet. Bring Leraye there unharmed. He may have an escort of no more than two. They must be unarmed. We will abide by the same terms. Only two demons will be sent to receive him, and they will have no weapons. We will cease fire for... half an hour. If we do not have him by then, there will be war."
...This was good. This might work. The coordinates weren't too far away, they could be reached easily by land transport or a very fast run.
"We accept your terms," he responded. "We will send two people to meet you shortly."

After shutting off the comm, he turned to the group.
"I don't trust them to bring only two people, and I don't think anyone else here does either--so I see no reason why we should only bring two. Still, this may be the best way to do it without risking too much bloodshed. We could send two people while I come along cloaked, but I've been spotted while cloaked by magic users in the past, so I'm not sure how well that would work. I'll volunteer to be one of the two, if no one has any objections. Keng, do you have any problems with that?" She was, technically, his superior officer.
"Anyone who wants to come along, well..." he held up the Universal Box in a quick gesture.
"Hunty, you're free to come, but you might want to be a bit less...clankhappy. No need for unnecessary antagonism before the negotiations start. There should be enough air under that protective bubble to last you most of the time, but the air might start to get a little thin toward the end of it, aaaand you may just want to get a rebreather. Should be in one of those boxes way back in the corner." He pointed once again with his foot, despite now having both hands free to do the job.

[Kengplant]

"... Yea... you should have mentioned that melee thing earlier. They might still come in handy though." Keng confirmed to Fraze then turned her attention to Cyborg. "No, they wanted to make sure they got fitted properly, besides, we haven't got time to go running around grabbing every tiny bit of weaponry you fancy you might need. With the number of things you've requested so far we could very nearly do a full lap around Spacefleet to get em all. You can make do with what's here."

With that she grabbed a few cyber swords which were essentially just retractable swords with shiny buttons and offered them to anyone who might want one.

...

" I'll volunteer to be one of the two, if no one has any objections. Keng, do you have any problems with that?"


"No problems. We should have ships readied in the launch tubes incase they try to interrupt the negotiations from the air. For all we know they're going to be sending illusions to talk to us. Not that we don't have holographic stuff we could send to talk to illusions but I don't trust our holograms not to flicker at some crucial moment like they did back during those negotiations with the Kalfarandianos. They were using holograms too though so they couldn't really complain. Fun times. Having some people hiding in the box is all fine and well but I'd rather not have that be our sole option of defense. We need something a bit more snappy as a dozen people piling out of a box onto a small platform just sounds like a game I used to play when I was a kid where everyone tried to push eachother off a raft into the water. I'll take a few marines into those new stealth mechs that came out of the brain works last month and wait nearby. I'll take Ethan if he's available and maybe one or two others. Do you know of Bacon is away on mission or here?"

[Kat]

Kat blinked as Fraze suddenly put his hand over her face. "What the - "

Needless to say, she shut up instantly the moment she saw pictures flickering in her vision instead of his hand. It was like sitting way, way up front in a movie theater and having the entire place all to yourself. Sort of.

"Demon magic," she began, much of her attention still on the pictures, "is way different from human magic, although I'm sure anyone would know that. I can't figure out much right now; I'll have to see for myself on the battlefield. But there's just something about how they cast their shields...something different, but I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps they're sturdier, but I saw one collapse in just a few seconds..."

[Cyborg]

" Maybe the magic can be counter acted by a certain force. A certain type of magic. Or maybe some sort of energy. And it's okay Keng, sorry if I am overwhelming you." Cyborg stated.

[Huntress]

And then they stood around looking at each other occasionally saying things like 'how nice' for the next ten days or so.

...yeah, sorry 'bout that, chaps xD *takes the liberty to fastforward the action, considering that if anyone else had wanted to do anything in the middle, they'd have done it already*

Hunty was feeling let down a little.

She hadn't been to many negotiations - well, technically she had, but they'd mostly meant holding a sword to the enemy's neck and negotiating their surrender. Sometimes the other way around, but that's life for you, and at least it meant she still had one. And there had been that time during the last Guild Wars, but that was less of a proper negotiation and more nudging each other waiting until Rane got the guts to call a wedding.

Nonetheless, she felt on some deep, basic level that proper negotiations with the enemy should involve things like flying banners and fierce, chilly wind howling across the wild plains, and defiant glaring between the enemy parties, and the metaphorical flexing of muscles in the form of readying weapons that nobody should technically have brought but did anyway. As it was, they were standing under the star-dotted void on the lifeless surface of the moon, either party in their own protective airtight dome. Due to the lack of air, there were no flying banners, and anyway she hoped that there would be no passing wind since there was only so much air to spare and it was already getting a little lived-in. Of course they had come with more than just two people, as had the demons, and there had been some mutual silent glaring filled with a mixture of accusation and embarrassment. And they were all armed to the teeth*. But they were separated by several feet of chilly vaccuum and could do nothing but glare in silence at this point.

"Ooh, I think I can build myself a cleavage with this thing," Bloody Mary's voice broke into the silence.

The glares glassed over as brains tried to process that info, then gave up.

"Alright, look," said the meepit, currently back on Hunty's shoulder, fully covered with the skinsuit, and the only rabid meepit present as the captain had left the rest of the gang at the spacefleet. "We have Leraye. They want Leraye. We don't much like the guy. Howsabout we hand him over and perhaps get out of this place with everyone's limbs still attached?"

The captain turned to look at the demon party.

"If we hand him over," she said, something metallic in her voice, "do you promise to leave and never return to the moon... and never bother the pirates down on the planet, for that matter?"

* Within reason, of course. Being armed to the teeth while looking relatively harmless to the enemy eye is a carefully perfected art that has been sadly underestimated by just about everyone who's not familiar with said art.

[Rider]

[glow=red,2,300]The two demons at the negotiations were Kyvr and the High Warmaster. Using magical cloaks, they had managed to conceal a good dozen fighters behind them. They were well aware that the Fleet and Pirates were probably doing the same. They had the advantage in one other regard, though. They didn't need to breathe. All one had to do was to dispel their air, and suddenly, no more humans. Schzain sat behind her magical cloak, furious that she couldn't use her natural one. She had positioned herself directly behind Kyvr.

"If we hand him over, do you promise to leave and never return to the moon... and never bother the pirates down on the planet, for that matter?"

"Would you take the promise of a demon if we did?" Kyvr asked.

The High Warmaster raised his hand to silence Kyvr. "We give you our word."

The words slipped so easily off his tongue, like oil off water. [/glow]

[Kengplant]

Keng was waiting silently in her stealth suit-ship... whatever it was thing. It kinda flipped between the two, like a transformer. Even from inside it all she could hear was a faint humming from the cloak, hardly noticeable even to her ears, and surely non-existent in the silent vacuum of space. She couldn't help but marvel at the ingenuity that this sort of silence in such a complex machine must have taken. What were they calling them again? Stealth, Ambush and Recon Ship Suits? S.A.R.S.S.? ... Great... they were a disease...with an extra "S"... ((that was totally my accident o.0))

She wasn't too far away from the small platform where negotiations were taking place. She's managed to get six of her stealth units out to the location, herself included, who all now hovered in their ship mode. Even if the cloack were to malfunction the dark outer shells would hardly be noticeable in the black abyss. The vehicles were too expensive for large production, so there weren't many to be sent out. She could hear the conversation through the open communication devices brought by the greeting party to the negotiations.

"Hold steady folks. I have a feeling things are about to get very interesting..."

((any SF people who wish to be present in any of the SARSS vehicles may claim one. Must be a member of SF as of this moment in the RP... sorry Cyborg.))

[Fraze]

Fraze had had some experience with diplomacy in the past. Admittedly, much of this had been observation. There were currently a good half dozen cloaked 'Fleeters behind them. Fraze had been in this position himself a number of times: invisible, but known to exist by his side and suspected to exist by the enemy side. Negotiations sometimes lasted for many, many hours over days or weeks, and he had to stand silent all the while during these negotiations, in case something should go wrong. He had observed the many tricks that made up truce negotiations such as these.

"Ooh, I think I can build myself a cleavage with this thing," Bloody Mary's voice chirped into his ear. Images unbidden of meepitboobs flooded Fraze's mind.

"We give you our word."
Fraze's mind snapped back to the topic at hand. He nodded. "We will take you at your word. We want to avoid bloodshed, and are sure you wish the same." There was a promise there, an unspoken "and if you don't..."
Fraze motioned for Leraye to step forward, and unlocked his restraints. He was harmless now. The Gem was taken away, safe in Fraze's little box. He put one hand on the demon's back, and slowly led him forward. After all this, he would rather have given Leraye a plasma bolt, but you can't get everything you want.
When they were several paces away from the demon group, Fraze gave Leraye one final nudge. He wouldn't go any further than that, it might be considered a threat. "Here's your great leader. May he help you find whatever it is you're looking for." His voice held equal parts sarcasm and sincerity. He nodded, keeping his face pleasant, and backed away.

He stood at Hunty's side, and whispered, "Look around you." On all sides, the wasteland of the moon stretched outward. Fraze could almost imagine that this barren land, covered with craters and mountains and crevasses, stretched on to infinity. And above it all, the endless sea of stars. They were much more brilliant here than on the planet, because of the thinner atmosphere. But, they were still not as bright as in space. "I thought I would never see a more beautiful sight, but..." he shot a sidelong glance at Hunty, and stopped before finishing the sentence.

[Amneiger]

Amneiger was still in his office in the research sector. He kept one ear on the audio feed coming from the people at the negotiation site, but spent more of his time watching the feeds from the external cameras. The starfighters that had launched had landed on various parts of the moon's surface; while it looked peaceful enough, it also meant that they wouldn't be wasting time getting out of the docking bays if there was trouble. He cycled through the sensor systems pointed at the demons ships, occasionally checking to see if anything was coming from another direction. He still wasn't quite sure that he trusted the demons. What were they going to do now? What was Leraye going to do now? What would they do when they found that Leraye had lost his power? Would they abandon him? Or help him build another gem?

Amneiger swept another telescope over the areas behind the demons and wished for infrared sensors.