Tall Tails 1 - Their First Adventure

[SliceOfDog]

This RP is for me, Reaper, Dusty, Iscin, Pommie and Kitsunami only. If you would like to join please contact me before posting anything, but don't get your hopes up even then.

Some last minute things, guys;

I've said it before, I'll say it again; NO GODMODDING! Not that I have any reason to think any of you would, cause after all at least half of your are more experienced in RPing than me, and maybe the rest of you too. Just thought I'd be preemptive.

For these first posts, please let everyone post at least once before you've posted twice. This will not be the rule throughout the RP, you will be able to post several times without having to wait. But to introduce your characters I think it's just polite ^^

I'll be acting as every NPC for this RP, and then each GM afterwards (It won't always be me) will act as their own, to make sure the RP moves in the right direction. As such, if you start conversations with someone, try to give it a clear point, like asking a question. Because of time zones, you never know when I'll be asleep or something, so going up to an important character and saying "Hello" might leave you hours before you get a response, and even then I wouldn't know what you'd want to ask, so the best I could to would be something like "Hey... what do you want?". To avoid these horrible situations, try to ask questions or raise topics within the first thing you say. Ie "Hello sir. You don't happen to know where Item A or Place B are do you?".

Also, as the world is so unrestricted, describing places is up to everyone. Try to keep it between as few people as possible, but we can all chip in. For example, at first I'll be describing the room. This leaves you to describe your area within the room, and not much else. However, as soon as we step outside, it'll basically become first-come-first-serve. If you describe a street as wide and market-place like, I'm not going to contradict you (Unless it was previously described as something else!)

Hope that all makes sense, and with that said, please enjoy

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The office was a small, untidy affair. There was a desk for each member of the team crammed in, and a chair to each desk, leaving little room to maneuver. There was a door at one end, and a small window opposite, overlooking a series of sleazy bars and unreputable nightclubs, all seeming to compete for the most vulgar and bright advertisements. The walls were covered at intervals with personal affects. Above Captain Barnill's desk was a crooked framed image of the team, the frame's low memory capacity only allowing for about 5 seconds of looped footage - Small figures of the team fighting playfully (And some members not so playfully) for the center position.
Captain Barnill lay back sleeping, his body stretched out as far as the room would allow. His legs were wide apart under his desk, and his head lolled back over the small spine of his chair. One hand lay over his stomach, and the other brushed the floor. He was drooling slightly and occasionally smacked his lips together contently.

[Dusty]

Garren sighed and rubbed his temples as the clock on the wall ticked past midnight. The combination of too little sleep and the dancing lights of the neon signs outside had been wearing away at his concentration for the past few hours. "I hate all nighters," he muttered outl oud to no one in particular. Looking over to the sleeping canine captain he felt a pang of envy. Oh sure I have to stay up filing reports while our dear captain simply gets to sleep at his desk, Garren thought to himself.

With yet another sigh he hit the stand-by key on his computer monitor, then stood, stretching as he did, he reached around and massaged his tail to get the blood flowing after his prolonged state of being slumped in a chair. "Hey Captain! I'm getting the coffee pot going. You want some?" he asked as he stumbled over the mountains of files in the floor towards the coffee pot which was perched precariously on top of a gun locker.

[Nelle Kozera]

A dragon that seemed to be made of living obsidian opened the door to the office, the former admiral still looked as if he was in his late twenties, even though he was well over seven hundred. Dresden scanned the room for a moment as he was walking in. He took note of the Akalian had been, and decided to take a seat next to where he had been. “Gotta love those all those all-nighters…” He smiled looking at Garren, the Electric blue silted irises with the clear white outlining in eyes look completely out of place on the monochrome dragon as he made eye contact with the akalian. “You’d think that we could get a bigger room…” He said holding the eye contact for a moment before looking at the captain, “Do you think old Giles over there is every going to wake up…?” There was irony in the comment as he was ten times older than the captain. It occurred to him the second that he had said it, but was wondering if the Akalian had picked up on it….

[Kitsunami]

Lieutenant Kitsunami Lupo sat underneath her desk, fiddling with various pieces of what seemed to be computers, her blue and silver goggles across her face, glowing a dim emerald as she fiddled with wires and equipment. Upon her desk was an old model laptop, glowing with various additional parts and pieces that looked out of place, connected to a large and bulky computer that took up most of her desk, bleeping every few seconds. Behind her lay a pile of discarded components, both broken and new, comprising a mass of green technological mess that glowed dimly in the light. Behind the mass, stood a single locker, battered and scratched, possibly holding some of her personal items.

The laptop lit up with a resounding chime, causing Kitsunami to both hit her head on the desk, curse, and grasp for the black sidearm on her thigh. Rubbing her head and muttering, she slid out from underneath the desk, lifted her goggles and leaned back into her seat, tail twitching in agitation as she checked the screen, looking over the top of the laptop to watch Garren move towards the gun locker, one hand leaning down to finger at the holster at her side, green eyes glancing to and fro around the room.

"Coffee...?" She peered cautiously over the laptop, and gazed at Dresden warily.

(hows that? n,n)

[pommie]

Rhys was slumped onto his desk with his head buried deep in his arms. He had been in that position for over half an hour now, completely unmoving and on the constant verge of sleep. This was a most unnatural time to be awake. He could hear the activity around him and lazily signalled to Garren that he too would most appreciate a coffee. It was absolutely vile stuff, he had learnt tjhat long ago, but it was not the taste he was after. Right now all he needed was the precious caffeine, or else he'd end up making a fool of himself, much like their captain was currently doing. And that was something he could not allow. The mere smell of the coffee being brewed helped drag him back into a state of alertness.
Rhys lifted his head out of his arms and looked up at the newcomer. It took him a few moments to recognise the slightly blurred figure as Dresden. He closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. His eyesight always got worse when he was tired. He couldn't see anything clearly beyond the reach of his arm.
With his eyes still closed he addressed the room in general. "Well, are we almost ready?"

[Iscin]

A screeching, ear piercing sound suddenly entered the room as Acris was moving some piece of junk burnt out turbine across the floor to better get to the second half of her mutilated desk. Second half? Yes second half due to her dividing it and modifying the desk she had been given to create a sort of workshop cubicle scattered with various pieces of diagnostic and repair equipement. Despite swinging her bushy ringtail from contentedness in her activity, it did not knock over any of the more delicate things resting on the opposing half of the desk.

Once she had finished moving the piece of hardware the racoon girl spun 'round and smiled at the unhappy faces including the rudely awoken Captain's, "Make mine a latte Drezzy!" Acris happily chimed and then went back to fiddling with her playthings kneeling down and accidentally soaking one knee in a pool of high grade synthetic oils but not caring or even noticing as she jammed a tool into the turbine's blades.

[Dusty]

"Geeze Acris. Have some consideration for others," Garren grunted as the sharp sound pierced his skull and only compounded his migraine. Attempting to distract himself he opened the gun locker. Besides the group's weapons it also housed three large cans of generic coffee. He scooped out a liberal amoun onto a grease stained filter. Once the coffee maker beeped and began hissing as it expelled the coffee he reached for the shelf next to the gun locker for the cups only to find a empty plastic bag.

"Perfect. Hey captain we got any more cups? I'd rather not share the pot with everyone else."

[SliceOfDog]

(To adress Kitsunami's earlier question, yes, that was great )

Barnill blinked and looked around for the source of the noise. As always, it seemed, it came from Acris' so-called "workshop". He hastilly wiped his mouth, put on his beret and mumbled more to himself than her;
"Dammit girl, you wanna give me a heart attack?"
He then turned his head to the gun locker and spoke in a more authoritative voice.
"Ran out of cups again, eh? Well they don't come free ya' know! I only bought a pack the other day, and we've not been getting much decent work recently. I can barely tide us over! If you lot'd work a bit harder maybe I wouldn't have to - " He broke off and looked under his desk. He bent down and, sheepishly, picked up the new pack of cups he'd left on the floor.
With a dark look to no one in particular, he handed the cups to Garren.

(Don't worry everyone. I'm not going to leave us talking about cups in a small office for the entire RP. I just don't want to immediately enter a stupidly contrived situation. If no one else has initiated anything by my next post, I'll get the ball rolling for real. I just know certain people, myself included, need a few posts like these to get into the characters)

[Kitsunami]

Kitsunami continued to stare at Dresden over the rim of her laptop, her eyes peering at him intently as she watched the Captain pick up the cups, and hand them over to Garren. She then switched her gaze to him, watching him closely.

"Coffee?" She tilted her head, then, shaking it repeatedly as if to deny the foul liquid, returned to the screens in front of her, to look for the source of the chime. It showed itself as a blinking transmission icon, to which, ever the curious, she immediately began attempting to trace, paws flashing across the keyboard, even as she called out to Barnill.

"Captain, message coming through for you..."

[pommie]

The coffee was, as Rhys had expected, vile. The hours were frankly abysmal, and not for the first time he had to remind himself why exactly he was here. His presence was being paid for by good money. Until the coffee was cool enough to drink he just inhaled the steam and vapour, as though that way he could still absorb some of the caffeine.

As was his habit, he dragged a pen and a piece of paper towards him from the far end of his desk, ready to scrawl down whatever the message was. He liked a copy of everything, especially if it was from someone he used to work under. He wondered if sometime in the future he would have to transcribe messages between Captain Barnill and some future employer. Probably, at some point. He wouldn't be able to take these hours if they kept on going. He wanted action.

He waited for the message.

[Nelle Kozera]

Dresden had crossed his arms when she had called him that, he hated it to no end, and it was a known fact. “Well, I would have but now you can get up…or…” He looked over at the captain. “Hey Giles do you think you can get her a cup of coffee while your over there…” He asked, he refused to get it himself. He turned his attention to Kitsunami who had been staring at him for awhile he was about to speak up before before he heard about the message. He’d bring it up later….

[SliceOfDog]

"Mnh?" Barnill looked over to Kitsunami, and then realised what she had said. He nodded and pressed a button in his desk.
"Take this down, Rhys" he said unnecessarily as a 2D screen flickered into life in front of him. Even though it was facing Barnill, due to the nature of the hologram, the rest of the room was treated to a mirror image of the screen's content; A wide eyes chocolate Labrador sitting very close to whatever he was using to transmit the message, and blocking out much of the small room behind him. He appeared to be alone, and he had a wide but odd looking smile.
"Commander?!?" yelped Barnill in surprise, immediately flattening his ears and shirt. The Labrador gave a tense laugh.
"Don't be silly, old friend, you know only my soldiers call me Commander! Call me Daniel, like always! I was just calling to see how you were doing..."
Barnill, for all his surprise at speaking to his old Commander for the first time in over a decade, recovered admirably well.
"Well... now that you mention it Com- uh, Daniel, I'm doing quite remarkably. I've put together a mercenary team, you see, and we're fast becoming quite rich! I bought a small ship with my cut from our last job! Couldn't do that on army pay"
"Or so you've heard, I understand" interrupted the Labrador, before giving another tense laugh. If he saw the cramped office and messy desks that completely disproved Barnill's boasting, he hid it very well, talking straight on, ever faster "Well, that's good, that's good. Are you quite okay? Only I thought I heard someone dropping their eaves on your end... No? It might be on my end then... certainly many eaves being dropped all around me these days! Haha! Old inside joke between us, you understand. Anyway, I thought I'd remind you of that old game we used to play. You know, the one where we'd transmit pictures of a tower. Sometimes they'd be commercial towers, which would be good, but then sometimes they'd be military towers, which were not. And then, if you followed the code, you'd go to the top of the tower, and everything would make sense! Haha! Yes, right, okay. I'm off to my nearest Schopen-co commercial building, because I find they usually have what I want. You should go to your nearest Schopen-co too! They might even have that game we used to play! Or something similar! Haha! Alright, see you old friend!"
"But Dan-" Before Barnill could finish his sentence, the Labrador reached forward, and the screen went blank, then flicked out. Barnill half stood, extremely confused.

[Kitsunami]

As the transmission cut out, Kitsunami cursed, peering over the edge of her laptop.

"Tracing failed." She stated rather simply, then she leaned back into her chair, staring at the Captain in a way that suggested she had some idea of what his 'commander' wanted, and thought he obviously, being the Captain, knew too.

[pommie]

Rhys' page was still blank. The moment he had seen the labrador he had frozen completely, and was thankful he was outside of the commander's arc of view. He had barely heard a single word that had been said, but now that the message had been completed he was finally able to relax again. He hissed loudly as he breathed out the breath he hadn't realised he had been holding.

Commander Daniel was a ghost from his past he had hoped never to see again. They each held secrets neither wanted the other to know.

That he appeared to be an old friend of Barnill complicated matters. It complicated them a lot.

[Nelle Kozera]

Dresden rested his muzzle over on his palms musing over the current predicament. He had never encounter Daniel personally but he had heard about him, and he was sure that Daniel had heard about him. He was unsure what to think, but he figured he would ask a question anyway. "Giles..." He said not moving or even looking at the commander. "What do you plan to do? That was the most poorly hidden code i have ever heard before..." He said, though he figured that was the point. "So, whats the plan then?"

[Dusty]

Garren stood in the corner calmly sipping his coffee as the whole exchange played out. "So then. Unless I'm going crazy I'm pretty sure the dear commander Danial was dropping us a coded hint. A pretty blunt one at that." Without another word he sat his coffee down and yanked him rifle out of the gun case. "If so we need to stop by the ammo store. My particle block is running low."

[SliceOfDog]

Barnill looked round his eager crew. He might have been proud if he weren't so confused.
"Plan... right... yes, of course there's a plan..."
He frowned at the floor for a moment. Despite all his past incompetence, it was not the 'code' that was confusing him, nor was he struggling to formulate a plan. He raised his head and adressed the whole room;
"I don't understand," he said slowly "Why in code? He knows me well enough. I mean he obviously wants me to go to SchopenCo, why not just come out with it?"

[Kitsunami]

Kitsunami looked up from her screen again.

"He looked particularly...nervous. Edgy, Captain. A trap ?" She then began rummaging around in the piles of technoloagy, checking her goggles and neural interface were functioning before pulling out a belt with ammunition pouch's and a small PDA.

[pommie]

Action at last. Rhys checked he had his knife and plasma pistol on him, a highly redundant as they were always strapped to his belt, except for when he was asleep. Sure, there were better places he could be going: he ran the risk of being recognised at SchopenCo, but what was life without a little risk?

He wondered whether anyone had noticed his earlier fear. Certainly no one had mentioned it, and he wanted it to stay that way.

"Rather than sitting worrying about why Daniel gave the message in such an abysmal code, how about we just go out there and do something before we're all poisoned by another round of coffee?" he demanded, before drinking the remainder of the offending, vile liquid in his cup.

[SliceOfDog]

"The coffee's not that bad, I ground the beans myself..." Barnill said, not quite listening. He was running things over in his head. But he slowly came back to reality to see his team ready for action. He smiled grimly, and ran a hand under his beret.
"Right, here's the plan. We're going to take any easily concealable weapons and as much ammo as we can hide, and then pay a visit to SchopenCo. Kitsunami; bring your laptop. We might need to hack into their security system. Garren, bring your power tools, incase we can't. Rhys, something spooked the Commander good. I've never seen him act like that, and he's hardly a coward. I'll need you watching our backs, and if things get ugly, I'm counting on you Dresden to find us a way out of there. You're an old military hat, right? And Acris... if we... uh... come across any old technology none of us understand... or... doesn't work or something..." he trailed off and avoided eye contact with the engineer, before raising his voice again.
"Right! Let's get ready and move out!"

[Kitsunami]

Kitsunami nodded her head and shuffled in the pile of tech, finding the shoulderbag and quickly placing her laptop within, with various cables for uplinks, wireless nodes, batteries and other such flashing, beeping appirations. The sound-proof bag then muffled the noise of the laptop and its devices and she hooked her PDA onto her belt, linking it up to her goggles with a small cable around her ear, bringing down the microphone and lowering her goggles which began to glow a dim blue as she enabled the neural network, effectively rendering her able to see her laptop screen, type and use it, while not actually having to take it out of the bag.

Kitsunami nodded to herself and her hands began typing in the air, or at least, so it would seem to the others. In actuality she tested the virtual keyboard, checked the power and, finally satisfied, raised her goggles again.

"Neural Network's online Captain. If we need to hack anything, I can probably take over wireless. Hardwire through the PDA if it don't have wireless, maybe." She shrugged, and then lowered her goggles, typing into the air as she moved towards the gun-locker, placing several clips for her pistol onto her belt.

"Satnet is....online. GPS and visuals enabled. Routing comm traffic..." Her radio, and anyone else's would beep as she linked up the communication program on her laptop to whatever Sattelite network and boosted the potential signal of the teams communication line. She continued to chat to herself as she worked, and any of the team with PDA/other such equipment would find it automatically bringing up a live Satellite feed of SchopenCo and the surrounding area. Though, exactly who's satellite she had commandeered wasn't known, and that was probably a good thing.

"Area looks clear...lot of vehicles though, lot of rooftop coverage. No way to know if theirs anything hiding inside, this piece of trash doesn't have thermals." She continued to mutter to herself, tail swishing behind her, as she paced to and fro, paws twitching at the air in a circle while she awaited whatever their next move was going to be.

((too much explanationage? n.n))

[Dusty]

OOC: Just saying before hand I know this is a real life weapon

"If I remember the layout of the area correctly there is a old Oil silo nearby. I'll rig that with charges ahead of time for our plan B slash fall back point," Garren announced as he placed his full sized rifle back in the gun locker and pulled out the smaller Type-6 PDF.



He checked the ammo load as he continued his statement, "Also what tools do you want me to bring? I'd rather not carry out the Arc Welder if I can avoid it. Its not that easy to carry or conceal."

[SliceOfDog]

((I'm without a computer until tomorrow night, and maybe longer, so if I'm missing for a long time, just assume Captain Barnill goes along with the rest of the group 0_0
I'll edit this into a real post if I can later, but short for time. See you all (Hopefully) tomorrow))

[Iscin]

Acris had been busy fiddling around with her turbine as the interchange of communication had occurred, but now that the team was so obviously getting ready to move out she withdrew herself from the world of tinkering and entered into the world of practical armament.
First she stands back up and sends a code transforming the multifunctional tool into a swarm of nanomachines that reform as a simple metal band which covers her right wrist. Next she opens a drawer and pulls out a small but advanced sidearm, a pistol which is loaded with smart bullets -projectiles preprogrammed to recognise and modify their trajectory to likely targets along with being tied into a targeting system- she then packs extra tools, weapons and ammunition into a satchel before pulling the strap over her shoulder. She finally pulls on some well worn goggles onto her head with the strap going under her ears and hair though she doesn't wear them over her eyes yet.
"I hope this Schopen-co has a hardware section" she says with a little bit of a frown on her face as most missions only served to tear her from her work. "Oh and don't worry Captain anything Kitsunami can't crack I'll just cut open!" Acris grins and pats her multifunction welder hanging from the left side of her belt opposite the firearm whilst not making eye contact with the kitsunae.

[SliceOfDog]

"Of course they have a hardware section! At SchopenCo they have everything you could possibly need" Barnill snapped at Acris irritably, not noticing his sub-concious repetition of the endless SchopenCo advertisements that frequented the lower cost transmissions that were all his team could afford. "Right," he continued, addressing the team as a whole "I think we're about ready. Now I want us inconspicuous, but ready for anything. Likely to be a lot of civilians around, so watch your fire"
He strode purposely out the door, a movement impeded by the many cramped desks, chairs and the odd workshop in the small room. As always with Captain Barnill, the 'follow me' order wasn't given, simply implied by rights of Command.

((SchopenCo isn't gonna be next door, so describing the streets and such will basically be first come first serve. Events might change depending on where you guys say we go, so let your imaginations run FREEEEE!!!
...
But... not too free...))

[Dusty]

The lower wards could be described as the purest expression of society or a hell hole depending on your point of view. And from Garren's they were a hell hole. Most of the street lights had either blown or been shot out meaning most of the illumination of the street came from the Neon Signs of the night clubs. The strange angles and hues cast a dark tone on the entire affair.

Garren stuck close to the group as the useful mix of homeless, thugs, and other refuse from civilized society leered at them. A canine in a long coat dashed out of the crowd towards the group, "Hey! Hey buddy! You need anything? Guns? Drugs? Quick fix?"

Ignoring him Garren turned to the Captain, "When are we gonna be able to move out of this place?"

[Kitsunami]

Kitsunami gave the approaching canine a look that suggested unspeakable horrors were imminent. She purposefully put a paw to her pistol, with a glint in her eye, and he backed off.

"Whoa Whoa! I wasn't gonna do nothing lady, lets not be hasty" The canine then backed off and retreated into the crowds.

Kitsunami proceeded to give the same, cold, calculating glare to each of the homeless as they eyed her laptop bag, and then removed her paw from the pistol, lowering her goggles to watch SchopenCo on the satellite.

"Still clear Captain...not even any visible security, almost looks deserted..."

[Nelle Kozera]

The dragon had been scanning ever square inch of landscape sense they had left the building. He also had brought along a map of area along with him. “I am assuming this is a trap…” Dresden said looking up at the surrounding buildings. As they got there he pointed something on near the tops of the buildings. “If they want us gone, snipers will hit us from there…” He pointed of section of building nearly 800 meters away. “And there…” He pointed to another building 1.5 kilometers in the other direction. “Anywhere else would give them an impeded line of sight on their targets.” He ended his sentence with a yawn, he seemed a little bored. “So, are we ready to get this over with?” He had brought along a collapsible carbine which he had hid under a long coat that was common to this area of the city.

[SliceOfDog]

Barnill turned to Dresden.
"That's why I told you all to hide your weapons. We don't look much like civilians, cause it's hard to hide talent as big as ours, but we don't need to make it obvious"
Saying this, Barnill stole a glance at the distant rooftops. On the horizon, as the city became generally richer, the rooftops became flatter and most of the buildings were block flats and skyscrapers. In this less-than-reputable part however, the roofs were places to grow all kinds of 'herbs', send illegal transmissions, and even dry out clothes. There were plenty of bumps and shapes that could be a disguised gunman.
"Okay everyone, keep a look out, but try and hurry. I think I can see the SchopenCo tower far ahead and I don't wanna get shot before we even get there!"

[pommie]

Rhys loosened the knife in his belt and kept his head down. There was little point him keeping alert for potential danger on the rooftops. He couldn't even see past the second level windows.
There seemed to be a distinct lack of a plan for walking into what was widely accepted as a likely trap. As a precaution, Rhys reached inside the inner breast pocket of his coat and flipped a minute switch located in the stitching, turning on a weak, personal deflector. No one knew about the deflector, he had kept it a secret from even his current team. It was just about strong enough to lessen the impact of a fatal shot or knife stroke.
"Let the fun begin," he said, to no one in particular as his hand returned to his knife hilt.