Take back the city (1-2)

nUcLeArEnVoY · Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:27 am

"I do say, m'boy, ever since the first time I saw you, you've looked damn familiar," Teck noted duly, his thorough inspection of Tails' bright and cheerful features as focused as could be (even with a complimentary rub to the chin!) He tried to remember just where he's seen the fox from.

Being from North Island didn't exactly provide the most up-to-date news. North Island considers the commencing of the Incartopolis Cookie Festival as 'breaking news', so it is suffice to say that Tails is hardly ever mentioned. Still, Teck did have some remnant of a photo memory of that bright, youthful countenance and his legendary knack for machines, but for the life of him he just couldn't nab it, even considering that the fox was working hard in his prime. "What's your name, laddy? I'm Teck, an astronomer hailing from North Island."

Diluss · Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:38 pm

Tails chin slid further down the outside of the plane as he leaned further out of the cockpit to get a view of the hed--porcupine. Porcupine who was from...

"Oh, neat! I'm Miles Prower. You can call me Tails!"

Mie · Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 10:47 pm

Despite all the jibing and complaining Ace and Rock's wordless battle of the BO Funks had elicited moments before, Jam seemed to have forgotten her aversion to proximity in all the hub-bub. She dropped her weight against the grease-sullied simian's side, staring on in amiable silence at the cramped garage's sudden burgeon of activity until generally addressed by the pint-sized celeb. With an obliging dip of her head, she replied to the chipper kit's salutation with a somewhat slouchy "Sup," that didn't quite carry the same poise or diction as the "nice to meet you"s, pleases, and thank yous the palpably mature youth exuded.

She would have been content to leave it at that, too, and get back to the task at hand (whatever it was), but when it seemed to suddenly be introduction time, the papaya-hued primate dragged an index finger under her nose with a sniff, and vainly attempted to shove her hands in her pockets (she wound up settling for just her thumbs), before adding with an indicative shrug, "Jam."

nUcLeArEnVoY · Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 9:27 am

"MILES PROWER," Teck concluded outspokenly, throwing his arms up as if in relief. "I knew I recognized the name somewhere, you're the bloke who flits around with that blue hedgehog Sonic, right or wrong?"

"Damn pleasure to meet'cha, laddy, it's an honor..."

From there on, his lips were zipped shut in the advent of a brainstorm and a fold of the arms abroad his densely furred chest. His mind wandered from the joy of meeting new faces (especially those of celebrities) to dwelling upon the crisis at hand. Indeed, the boisterous tidal wave that ravaged the city streets no more than a few hours ago was a prospect his inquisitive mind could never stray too far from, and in spite of his silence, if his mind were able to emit noise, it would be deafening - gears turned, thunder crashed, but no conclusion was drawn.... so he spoke, desperate for answers, "Ace here mentioned that some sort of creature was responsible for the tidal wave that struck the city. I was all the way down town at the time, so I don't really know the details. Could anybody describe the creature to me?"

psikeout · Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 3:22 pm

As par the course, Rock wasn't the type to go dropping his name on everyone he met. In this case, though, chances were that he and the fox had already gotten acquainted over the course of the several hours they'd been working together, anyway, if only to put an end to the calls of "hey, you" across the garage—As if he hadn't known the mutated, two-tailed, super-genius eight-year-old on sight, anyway. (The kid was notable to him for more than celebrity reasons. To Rock's recollection, Miles Prower was the youngest person ever in space, and that was kind of a fun novelty.)

So, while the others spoke, Rock took the moment to just... chill for a few, take a time out, and update Jam on what had been going on.

"We're actually about done here," he said in a quiet, low tone to the girl leaning on him, resting his hand on her opposite shoulder. His voice was kind of crackly and raspy, but surprisingly relaxed for the moment, especially given their current company. "Kid's got a good radar system. He'll be able to tell us what's in the fog, and... y'know, whether or not we'll wanna fight it, or..." He paused, and kind of smirked just a little. "... or go lookin' for some other island to live on, or... y'know what I mean?"

Diluss · Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 9:59 pm

"Yeah. Sonic and I stick together pretty much all the time, usually..." Tails trailed off.

He finally dropped his chin down to rest, quietly watching the conversation below. His eyes roved over the scene, taking in everything, before he spoke up again, adding his two cents to Rock's description of the statement.

"Yyyeah... Nobody really knows what's out there. It's pretty weird, no-one's been able to even get close to it, let alone take a picture of it, and all the boats that went out, never really..."

He paused, and shrugged as best he could in his position, uncomfortable with the rest of his sentence. The loss of life inherent in the two words '...came back' loomed up in the unspoken phrase like a ghost.

There was a brief silence as whatever emotional balance was being weighed inside his head came to balance. Then he set his jaw, hauled himself back into the cockpit chair with another leaky squish, and turned his attention to the controls.

He flipped a switch, and a small collection of screens set into the dashboard flicked on. There was a flicker, and a blocky logo flashed across the screen, before being replaced with a brief ram test. A very gentle whir of fans activated inside the dashboard somewhere.

nUcLeArEnVoY · Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 9:28 am

"Maybe the reason they never, came back," Teck emphasized with quote-fingers, "was because they were taken somewhere?" He proposed. "Doubt they're dead - I thought Eggman was never the murdering type. Afterall, if this really is that Eggman bloke's doings, surely he's fabbed up some bloody underwater station to hold potential hostages. Perhaps the key to restoring at least some shred of order to this city is biting the bullet, going down there and kicking some doors down followed by some egg-shaped arse, even if your radar reveals something of grand reckoning."

"I never suggest anything that barbaric, but staying up here essentially renders Eggman as the role of a sniper - able to shoot at US with whatever tricks he has while sitting comfortably in his ivory tower, spindly-legged ghost boats or no. Maybe we need to go directly to HIM? You're a mechanical genius, have you ever built or have the capability of constructing a submersible of some sort to bring us underwater?"

He spat that whole idea out but made the mistake of not fully thinking it through, quite contradictory to his nature. He always jumped at the opportunity to propose a course of action, alas his habit sometimes robbed his ability to fully dissect each and every advantage and disadvantage in the midst of his excitement. Yet he made the save - he did the 'thinking part' afterward. A brisk rub to the chin and an adjustment of his spectacles heralded his awkward perturbation, correcting himself, "Ah, but that would make us sitting ducks. Nothing more vulnerable than a descending submersible if I do say so mehself. Either way, going for the source would be the only way to solve this - we won't know what's down there... staying up here. Your radar system will definitely reveal the nature of the beast, indeed, and I completely sanction utilizing it to give us a taste of what's to come... but either way, unless we want this whole snafu to just keep going on and on like a barmy vinyl record, SOMEONE is going to inevitably end up diving down there to face it. So my final question is..."

"Who here likes to swim?" He delivered with a comical shrug, his mediocre injection of humor most likely falling on reluctant ears in light of the chaos at hand.

"Eheh..."

Mie · Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:30 pm

OOC: Short collab with me and the mister.

With scant more than a grin that looked a little too complacent with the notion of simply leaving the problem to fix itself (or not), the salmon simian dropped her head, smothering her ear into other monkey's shoulder. As Teck began to vocalize his thoughts on the situation with all his pomp, circumstance, and un-understandable words (either because Jam didn't know them, or she couldn't pick them out through the prickly one's unfamiliar accent), an understated sort of lull overtook her features (and her attention), as she was reminded all too graphically of dragging lectures in cramped, stifling classrooms, days before summer vacations.

Her eyes began to wander behind their drooped lids, and her train of thought hopped lightly off its tracks, bored with its previous destination, and instead romped through a grassy meadow filled with cows that looked like giant marshmallows...

"Oh, man. Is that how you say that word? I been sayin' it wrong forever. No wonder Lola looked at me like such a douche the other day. Speakin' a' douches, that crow ain't so bad now, even if 'e is a nosy little douche. I wonder if maybe he remembers us...Nah. ... wadn't there somethin' I was s'posed to remember...? Oh, damn. Pretty sure I left the milk out... I could go for some chocolate milk..."

And so on.

"C'mon" urged Rock quietly, interrupting Jam's daydream as he started to pull away, and amble over toward the plane, while Teck was still sharing his thoughts, plans, and so forth with the others.

Sometimes, radically different people had similar traits; they just went about expressing them in different ways—For better or worse, depending on where one stands. Teck was a planner who enjoyed talking things out; Rock was a planner who didn't care to fill people in any farther than was necessary. And, as it stood, Rock was already neck-deep in his own process, which may have held a few similarities to what the porcupine was suggesting. He was just busy making it happen.

"Kid— ... Tails," he corrected. "Sorry I keep callin' you 'kid'. Anyway. Any luck?"

Diluss · Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 9:54 pm

Tails looked up in mild alarm.

"I wouldn't go out swimming!" he said, "Knuckles tried swimming out and he disappeared! That's what this last tsunami was!"

Then his attention drifted away from Teck though as Rock began asking him about the controls.

"Oh, uh... All the outlying computers are registering, and if the metal hasn't been too stressed, the IFCS should take care of the smaller problems. I haven't tested the flaps yet, though, and I think I'll run a self-diagnostic though, to dummy-check all the computer functions just in case any circuits are damaged. It could be dangerous to lose radar out in the fog."

There was a pause, and he smiled, "Fortunately, I still have these ole' things..."

He tapped the glass disc in the top center of the console. The four tools to an airman's trade resided behind slightly bubbled, but impeccably clean old glass: airspeed indicator, attitude indicator, altimetre and compass.

"...and I still have a map!" He patted an orange plastic satchel that was strapped to the inside of the cockpit.

Greens · Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:49 pm

Caz merely sat herself down on a nearby lump of old cardboard, staring off into Teck's and Tails' general direction, with a very genuine looking expression of utter bewilderment. Having just recently finished her fish sandwich (very lovely), she found there was little else to do other than listen to... whatever it was everyone else was saying. And normally that wouldn't be so bad, if she'd just understood any of it.

When the orangupine started gabbing, she heard him for a moment, before there appeared to be a long silence in her mind. When it was over, her line of vision snapped up from her clasped hands and towards the speaker, then darting every which way for a moment, just in time to hear him ask "Who here likes to swim?"

She raised a hand with dwindling vitality. "I do."

"No-- no, Caz, he's talkin' about somethin' else."

"Oh, okay," she said bored and unsurprised, and her head slumped once more. "Then, what is he talking about?"

Ace's mouth seemed to invariably tighten as he crossed his arms. "I... I don't know." He may or may not have been just joking around, but whatever was said had just been shot down by the boy genius. Fortunately, Tails was good enough to replace Teck's suggestion with... more techno-babble, as far as he was concerned.

"So, for all the laymen in the audience," he said, stepping up himself. "Do we have what we need? Or does Rock here smell like old meat for nothing?"

psikeout · Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 3:39 pm

Rock quickly rubbed at a place on his forehead in a sort of irritated headache-massage. "It's not that complicated," he answered Ace flatly. He clearly didn't like explaining things, but he took a very brief moment to attempt to, with some restraint. "The plane'll be ready in a few minutes. He's gonna fly up over the fog and use the radar imaging system to see what's in it. If there's somethin' out there above water, we'll have a good idea of what it looks like, where it's at, and how we can get to it, or land on it, or shoot it, or whatever."

He went about checking his work, and ensuring he really hadn't forgotten anything. As he did, he more quietly, distractedly added, "Maybe we'll see the missing ships and people."

Mie · Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 11:14 pm

For whatever reason, once pulled from her first mental lapse, Layla was a little more keen on staying in the game, especially since it seemed like stuff was finally happening -- Not that she understood word one out of the boy genius' mouth, but she was at least able to derive from all non-verbal cues that things were positive and/or at least not going too badly.

With little more than a sympathetic glance to her intellectual equal, which seemed to say, "It's okay, Ace, I'm dumb, too," she huffed a sigh and took a step back from the plane, crossed her arms, and feigned presence in the loop.

"'Kay, so even if everything's gravy with the bird, it ain't exac'ly a mini-van. Who's goin, and who's stayin'?"

Diluss · Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 4:06 pm

"I dunno..." Tails said cautiously, "I mean, I think the Tornado will fly, but... It'd be dangerous. We don't know what's out there either."

psikeout · Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 4:50 pm

"It's his plane," Rock said plainly. "He don't even hafta take anybody if he don't want to."

He thought just a very brief moment, then looked to the young fox and appended, "Not that I'm tryin' to send you off by yourself, but I'm just sayin'—Things work right, you won't need anybody—Things don't work right, then help's good and all, but somebody who can't handle the several-thousand-foot drop might only be a burden for you and your, ah..."

He motioned vaguely at Tails' tails.

"Y'know. ... Buttcopter. ... But it's up to you. Well, you and whoever doesn't mind possibly fallin' three or four thousand feet."

Greens · Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 7:16 pm

The cat crossed his arms, his head facing the ground even despite his eyes being mostly closed. He let loose some kind of a loose growl/sigh, and clicked his tongue when he realized that this would undoubtedly lead him into a whole new fiasco whether he liked it or not. He stood up.

"Well, look at it this way. Tails goes alone. If something happens, if he get shot down, then it's Tails against whatever took out the plane. And not that I... doubt his abilities," he went on. "But with a little help at his side... maybe we could, I dunno, improvise a little more easily."

"If you want help, then... well, I guess I'm up."

Caz looked at the speedily repaired plane with a... pretty seriousface-determined expression, actually. Determined, but but nervous, especially Rock's mention of multi-thousand foot drop (which encouraged a heavy gulp from her throat.) Nonetheless, she sat at the edge of her cardboard box, hands between her knees, gripping at the handle of the gun she still hadn't holstered yet.

"I..." she began, paused, and froze up.

"Huh...?"

But she just shook her head.

Take back the city (1-2)

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