[Fugu]

Reluctantly, your minds retreat from the brink of infinity, and don the confining garments of space and time. Whorls of memory ripple between the three of you, unsolicited visions of life and death. Yourselves waking in cramped, freezing rooms; a gelid skeleton bearing gifts; a beast of warmth and terror shattering its bonds of ice; people swallowed up in fresh graves of snow; verses of fire and urgency; Dezra McCale, lifeless, fading away.

The tesseract ends. A yawning porthole remembers its normal, modest size, and beyond it you can see a runway leading directly from the pod into a squat, rusty building. Three men pushing gurneys run out of the building and down the runway. The image of a red tree is embroidered into their navy uniforms.

[Lynx Cat]

Morgan shakes his head upon coming back from infinity. "Whoa... did you guys see all that too, or did I pass out again?"

He frowns when the men run down the runway. "Uh-oh, there they come." He squints and concentrates to see if he can ignore the pain from his ruined physical state long enough to try recalling whether he's seen the red tree symbol on the UniDat, and consequently whether those guys sound like they're allied with his human enemies, before using one of the precious few spells he has left.

[Benevolance]

"Guards? Already? Did they radio ahead? Morgan, do you have enough strength left to make us invisible? Or to get us out of here before they get in?" Glasgow waggles his fingers in a poor pantomine of spell casting.

[Lynx Cat]

"Not guards. Medics. Which is worse as far as I'm concerned, given what we've been through in Jalah." Morgan steps back, forcing himself to be discreet (it doesn't come easily to him), and subtly casts a spell on He-Who-Watches, causing the lithe elf to ripple and fade from sight. "You're our backup," he whispers.

(OOC: Burn a 3rd-level slot to cast Invisibility on HWW. Morgan will poise himself to cast Hypnotism next round, unless the situation changes by then of course.)

This post has been edited by Lynx Cat: 01 October 2007 - 05:22 PM

[Fugu]

The medics arrive within a second of He-Who-Watches' disappearance. Following a soft beep from outside, the pod door opens, and Morgan immediately casts his net over the anxious humans. Two of them promptly forget their urgency and stare in wonder at the gnome. The third, too, is stunned, but with surprise, not fascination. He blinks between Glasgow and Morgan, then glances at his colleagues for help. "Uh..."

[Benevolance]

"We were set upon by a Qua 'Bvu warship. We have two injured. They have nearly faded. Help us." Glasgow gestures to the back of the escape pod, trying to draw the man away from his fascinated comrades.

[Bluff +13]

[Fugu]

The human, a youngish fellow with bushy eyebrows, appears hesitant, but takes a step into the pod in order to see where Glasgow is pointing.

[Benevolance]

Glasgow strikes the man across the back of the head, hoping to knock him unconscious.

[Attack +13, 1d3 + 6d6 S.A. damage]

[Fugu]

The human's eyes go wide, then close as he falls to the floor, unconscious. The other two remain absorbed in Morgan's stare, and will continue so, Morgan feels, for several more seconds.

[Lynx Cat]

"Uhh..." Morgan looks from Glasgow to the medics, and turns to them. "Say, your colleague here seems to have tripped. Could you" - he points to one of them - "come up here and help us? You," he says to the other, "hold right there, I wanna ask you something. What do you know about the mission in Jalah? The ice world not too far off?"

[Fugu]

The requested human obligingly steps forward and kneels down to grasp his fallen comrade under the shoulders. The other replies to Morgan, "Some big scientific find, they say. Hagan says some blackshirt told him they're mining lost alien technology or some load of noar dung. I think it's all a cover-up for a new military base."

[Benevolance]

Glasglow smiles inwardly at the absurdity of the situation, then strikes the intern across the back of the head. "This one has fallen, too," he adds, helpfully.

[Fugu]

The second human slumps onto his colleague, a red welt rising from the pate of his tan shaven head. The remaining medic observes his unconscious fellows with bemusement. He leans in for a closer look, as if checking to see whether they are faking, and promptly joins them after a swift jab from Glasgow.

This post has been edited by Fugu: 05 October 2007 - 06:04 PM

[Lynx Cat]

Morgan lets out the laugh he'd been suppressing when the last human falls.

Never seen anything like that since the circus days...

"Heh... Guys, let's just... *chuckle* D'you see that one guy, the way he felt on top o' the other two? Classic, that one." He lets out one last high-pitched laugh. "Y'know, we gotta, I don't know, tie them up, then we'll figure out what to do with them. Seems they didn't know anything about us... oh well, we didn't even have to do this, at least see if they could heal us or something... not that it wasn't totally worth it, though." He smiles wide and chuckles some more. "Just wonder how safe the rest of the outpost is gonna be anyway... I think it's a good bet Blagorov got a prize on our heads and spread the word as soon as he could. At least in the vicinity... though I wonder whether this is 'vicinity' or not... dang, I still don't get the hang of the whole 'travel the stars' thing."

[Barak]

Out of nowhere, a voice speaks up.

"I was hoping you two could manage. My experience with invisibility led me to believe any aggressive action would negate it, and it might yet be useful. What's our goals and status?"

[Lynx Cat]

"Sure, good thinking." Morgan pokes his head out of the pod and sniffs around (quite literally). "The bowl's beams were pointing more or less this way, so I could bet a gold crown that at least one of the artifacts is here. We gotta use it again to be sure... but that will make a bunch of beams pop up, connecting to the artifacts, and we gotta make sure that won't get us killed. Maybe we should get our bearings here first. Besides, I'm running low on magic power, aside from, y'know." He vaguely points at his own ruined physical state. "But from what those guys said, I think we're safer now than we were before... at least until the word gets here."

[Fugu]

A high, whooping alarm begins to resound in your ears.

[Benevolance]

"We need to find a place to hide. We're in no condition to fight. We can try to run, but we don't know this place very well. I doubt we'll make it far."

The elf gestures to the incapacitated interns.

"These fellows have only seen two of us. Hu can slip out undetected and we'll meet up...there, later." Glasgow points to a spot, away from the base. Glasgow holds the wand and bowl out in the vicinity of He Who Watches, gesturing for the elf to take the objects.

"You take these. You're the least likely to be caught. Morgan and I will try and find a spot to hide, just in case that works. And if it doesn't, well...I don't think they've built a cell that can hold our gnomish friend. But if you don't hear from us in 24 hours...you come rescue us, you hear?"

Glasgow gives a nod to Morgan. "You ready?"

[Lynx Cat]

"Sounds good, we need someplace good to just... be now. Let's move!"

Morgan looks out the pod and readies himself to dash at Glasgow's cue.

[Barak]

He-Who-Watches first nods, then invisibly smiles at his own foolishness.

"Very well. I'll follow you two by quite a while to try and make sure you are safe, and to know where you are hidden shall you be successful. If they appear to be trying to simply arrest you.. I'll have to judge if my reappearance would be worth it. I'm pretty good at hiding even without magic, so it might be so."

He then picks up the objects and make ready to follow his two companions by about 40' back.

[Fugu]

The platform clanks beneath their feet as the fugitives jump down from the pod into the chilly air. As they run, they are momentarily stunned by their surroundings. The world is a thicket of metal. Narrow buildings are packed tight as arrows in a quiver and stretch as tall as a castle tower. Even more remarkable is that the buildings do not point straight upward; they all converge toward a single point. One by one, the towers reach their limit and climb no higher, until at last a single slender shaft meets an intersection of two other identical shafts, each of which has climbed down to the intersection from somewhere in the sky. As one's eyes focus, it becomes clear that the dark muddle above is not a sky, but another floor of buildings which all hang uniformly toward that same vanishing point. The station is an immense icosahedron. Fleeing around the squat hospital and through the tall, narrow trenches between buildings gives the feeling of running around inside a tightly packed metal walnut.

The streets are almost empty by the time Glasgow and Morgan reach them. A few scattered people, ragged and bundled against the cold, still scurry along. Few hiding places present themselves to the eye--the buildings are sheer, and doors are firmly shut with no knobs or gaps by which to pry entry. Soon the ground reaches an intersection with another face of the station--this one mostly absent of buildings. Instead, several metal knolls pock the surface in a regular pattern, although in some spaces there is an empty hole instead of a... Glasgow recognizes what the forms have in common; they are the tops of ships.

An even female voice echoes from the same speaker system that emits the alarm, "alert. All residents be advised: highly dangerous aliens are loose in the station. Please stay indoors. For your security, no vessels may enter or depart until the creatures have been caught. Repeat, please stay indoors."

Sure enough, one person hurries though this area into a hatch at the top of his ship. The vessel soon vibrates ineffectually, as if unable to escape its receptacle. Farther on, inside a marked-off portion of the dock area, a dozen uniformed figures are dashing from a central building into many small, identical docked vehicles. A few submerge below the surface, leaving behind an empty well, but most rise out of their dock and skate over the ground, hovering several feet up. They scatter in all directions, keeping to the ground and tilting to meet new faces as they come. One guns straight for Morgan and Glasgow, who yanks his companion into the shadows beneath the curved bridge. The car flies on. It and all of its fellows bear a silver tree on the hood.

Two police cars remain behind in their docks.

This post has been edited by Fugu: 12 October 2007 - 02:24 PM

[Lynx Cat]

Morgan elbows his pirate friend. "Do you think you'll be able to pilot one of those? Seems hard to stay hidden in here, and since I don't have enough magical power to teleport, we may need to use it to flee somewhere safe... if such a place even exists here. What a world, what a world." He seems lost in contemplation.

[Benevolance]

"Those ships? Probably. But it doesn't sound like they will let us take off. What we need is a place to hide. Any suggestions?"

Glasgow examines the street surface for any exposed drain pipes or culverts that the duo might be able to slip inside.

[Fugu]

The only obvious hiding places are the empty dock hubs. The crease in which Morgan and Glasgow currently cower is periodically marked by large grates, but no open drains.

Glasgow tiptoes through the bed of broken glass and discarded bolts that litter the crease and inspects the nearest grate. In the upper right corner is a small slit--a simple lock. Glasgow spots a long, thin bit of metal among the refuse and tries his luck. The lock does not give in.

A silver-treed car whines above, and Glasgow dashes back under the bridge. The car hovers sideways along the side of a nearby tower and careens toward the station floor. Abruptly, the car leaps into the air, lands on a second tower, and hovers back up again.

[Benevolance]

"Wait here, Morgan." Glasgow slips out from the cover of the curved bridge and makes his way as discretely as possible towards one of the nearby buildings. Giving a quick glance left and right, he slips the knife from its hiding place, attempts liberates the security cover from the panel and attempts to override the door lock. His brow furls in concentration.

[Hide/Move Silent +5, Security +10]

[Fugu]

With the aid of the stolen toolcard, Glasgow avoids setting off the lock's alarm, but does not manage to woo it open. Meanwhile, two policemen run from the station, weapons drawn, to the vehicle that had tried and failed to depart. Morgan watches with interest while Glasgow risks a few more seconds in the open to find the right wire. The narrow double door swings open. The two policemen keep their distance from the trapped ship as two cars hover into the dock area, also facing the ship. A loudspeaker bellows, "POWER DOWN YOUR VESSEL AND COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP."

[Lynx Cat]

Morgan eyes the policemen nervously while he briefly considers his options. Then, a mischievous smile gradually opens wider and wider as an idea takes place.

Then, a loud and ominous rumble comes from the surrounded ship. Its top briefly opens and then slams shut again, just enough to let through a strange, loud and small figure. It's Morgan himself, bathed in bright and crackling energy, eyes terrifyingly ablaze, shooting up to about 10 metres above the ship and then hovering in mid-air. A fierce, swirling wind sweeps his clothing and hair and makes bits of debris dance around him like moths around a flame. He makes wide, dangerous-looking gestures, while proclaiming solemn words in some unknown language. Bolts of electricity arc around him, sometimes connecting to nearby buildings, while the energy coursing through his body starts swirling around him in a globe that seems to deflect any shots fired at him. He looks menacingly at the policemen, and appears to be gathering electrical energy in his hands to shoot at them.

Meanwhile, back in his hideout, the real Morgan barely holds back a giggle, as he uses the distraction to let himself join Glasgow into the door he just opened.

(OOC: Use Major Image to attain the effect described above, and then take advantage of the distraction to move to the door Glasgow opened.)

[Benevolance]

"Why didn't you tell me you could do that?" asks Glasgow as he ushers Morgan inside the building and closes the door behind.

[Barak]

He-Who-Watches stands a way away from the mayhem, still invisible, watching the drama unfold.

[Fugu]

The officers and vehicles open fire on the illusion, then retreat while continuing to fire when there is no effect.

Morgan joins Glasgow inside a dim chamber. A narrow, metal, spiral stair extends down through the floor and up through the 10-foot ceiling. The stair descends twenty feet before ending at a locked door. Above, the stair continues as far as you can see, with a landing every fifteen feet. There is a closed door opposite the entrance, next to the stair, which, when opened, reveals an elevator. There is another closed door on the adjoining wall.

All doors are locked, but open after a minute or two of Glasgow's coaxing.

[Lynx Cat]

"There's a lot that Morgan the Wondrous can do, my friend." Morgan grins at the pirate. He lingers a bit by the doorway, both watching his own show and hoping He-Who-Watches can spot him, while still trying not to draw general attention. After enjoying himself a bit, and when it seems Glasgow is making headway with the doors, he'll have the illusion look like one of the shots came partly through the barrier and glanced him on the shoulder, reel back in pain, and fly away, entering the furthest-away building within range around its middle floor (by opening a window or hole in the wall or whatever with a flick of his hand and closing it behind him). Then, he'll follow his elven friend.

[Barak]

Smiling to himself at the ingenuity and playfulness of his small, gnomish companion, He-Who-Watches finally remembers that, unlike in the olden days, invisibility now is somewhat shorter in duration. Spotting the gnome, the elven monk quickly and silently makes his way over there, whispering "I am here" as he passes him.

[Benevolance]

"Let's head to the dunge..er, basement. We are less likely to encounter someone down there. We can activate the bowl and wand after we've rested a bit, and see where to go from there." Glasgow heads down the spiral stairs, works the door open, and looks for a suitable place to hide.

[Lynx Cat]

"We could close the front door before we go, no?" the magician says, giving the street a last glance to check for anyone nearby who might see them closing the door.

This post has been edited by Lynx Cat: 26 October 2007 - 08:09 PM