☆TRACK VIII: I'LL REACH YOU BELOW

[interdimanagers]

Who: All rescuers!
What: The trio is here to give you the deets.
When: The evening of February 18th.
Where: An abandoned subway.
Warnings: Nothing predictable, but you never know.

“Word has it on the wire That you don't who you are. Well, if you could jack into my brain, You'd know exactly what you mean here.” ☆I'LL REACH YOU BELOW The notification is sudden. A several hours in advance, all rescuers will receive a ping over the network from Shep that they are to gather at a specific location late that evening. The location will not be given out until one hour in advance of the meeting, but they are advised to be ready to receive it and move out immediately. When they arrive, the meeting is taking place in an abandoned subway. At first it doesn't seem like there is a way in, but after slipping through the rubble in some collapsed tunnels, you'll find it. Shep, Gold, and Silver are all present, and will spent the first while doing a careful headcount of those that show up, until approximately 15 minutes after the starting time. The results seem to be disappointing. People who were here the first time are missing, that much is obvious just from looking around – the leaders’ unease with it is clear. However, it doesn’t cause them to panic or change the point of the meeting, either. At 11:15 PM on the dot, then Shep will begin the meeting by explaining what they are all there for: information. There have been details that the team has been holding back on giving until now, and Shep will somewhat sheepishly explain that it’s because they didn’t want the risk the change of it being leaked in the event that new recruits were incapable or unwilling to blend and lay low for the time being. Thankfully, he’ll explain, everyone here has more than proven themselves capable of working within Vista’s system. So, they’ve been brought together so they can be fully brought up to speed. Information will be delivered in three parts, by each one of the leaders. Afterwards, questions can be asked, and the rescuers will be allowed to mingle and discuss for a few hours. All the information is concise, and in the end the actual explanation will end up taking a half hour or less. Afterwards, Gold has brought snacks to share, as has become customary. Hopefully you like pastries. “So, if you've got the time, Set up the tone to sync. Tap in the code, I'll reach you below.”

Comments

[avidita]

There wasn't any need to shoot it out, but... Fine. That works. Mammon adjusts themself to get a look at it, dipping their fingers in slightly to get a feel for the consistency.

[balletbattler]

Pearl laughs a little in spite of herself. "That's not surprising," she says. "Garnet's always been a natural at... inspiring loyalty."

That's the nice way to put it, right? People see Garnet and they see the same thing Pearl does: strength, wisdom, stability, courage. Maybe it's different here, because she's not a Crystal Gem, she's a musician, but Pearl has no doubt that Garnet can have the same affect on people no matter how she does it. "I just hope no innocent people get caught in the cross-fire."

[avidita]

"She doesn't need to talk." Mammon strokes along Fantasma's head. "She's a part of me, after all."

[nuns4money]

Eda then looks at Mammon, then the frog.

"So this little froggy is a part of you?" Does that mean Mammon is part frog?

[fromearth]

"....Right." Mammon is one of those people who just likes to be obtuse, aren't they. Whatever. "That's more'n enough to keep us busy for now. Don't wanna bite off more'n one step at a time."

[lightthedarkness]

"Haaaa..... yeah," she slumped forward as she thought back to the crazy fans. "Some of them may not be that innocent."

[balletbattler]

Pearl doesn't generally think of humans as the least bit threatening, so she frowns in confusion. "Oh, ah... what happened? Whatever it was I'm sure Garnet wouldn't have wanted them to do it."

[lightthedarkness]

She shook her head and waved a dismissive hand.

"It's nothing, but if any fan of hers yell at you about square hair, you tell me immediately, okay? I warned them not to do such a thing again and I won't let them ruin their second chance."

[balletbattler]

"Square... hair? That's what they care about?"

God, humans are weird.

[candothismuch]

"Not all the time. It depends on which Medals I'm using."

And considering he only had the three for Tatoba, he was severely limited in terms of versatility.

[woomy]

"We need to find a secret base where we can practice. Where are the abandoned depots?" There were abandoned warehouses, so there has to be some place where they could practice some fresh combo attacks. She really likes this idea. It's a plan.

[woomy]

Agent 3 follows Signless over to the where Cap'n Shep is. She likes Shep. Maybe it's just the title, but he reminds her of Cap'n Cuttlefish.

Waiting for Signless to start questioning him, she adds a little of her own flair on the question once he's done. "You didn't really give us a lot of deets. Do you have any?"

[interstellarebels]

"Oh...yeah, sure."

Shep sighs. He seems kind of reluctant to answer, but in the end he ruffles his hair uncomfortably and does it anyway.

"I guess we didn't really want to...say anything without confirming our hypothesis, but...we're pretty sure it's residual temporal flux. Like...that thing that happened with some of the guys we picked up on the ship. We were hoping this wouldn't happen, but it seems like some people are still getting bounced back into their timelines, even once they're in this dimension."

He raises his hands helplessly.

"You know, I don't know how these big hot shots do it! Pretty sure nobody they actually get on planet does this. We want to make sure that nobody is going missing for other reasons, but we're pretty positive that the majority of them are just faulty technology."

[spokethetruth]

Signless frowns. Like, it's basically the answer he was expecting, but the uncertainty isn't exactly nice, either.

"Do you think this is a security concern?" he asks. "Should we be doing something to help?"

[woomy]

But isn't she a sea bunny? She should like carrots!

"Okay. I'll come by around 4 with pastries. I hope you like chocolate and fruit jam filling things."

[woomy]

"Faulty technology? You mean they just Super Jumped back home because the guitar ship thingy broke?"

Okay, not exactly, but after fearing the worse... it almost sounds unbelievable that they were just snapped back to their own dimensions. The rescuers can't blame this on the two big labels?

"Do you think the labels know that this is happening to us?" Could they cause it to happen even more?

[interstellarebels]

"Silver's deactivated all the missing headsets, at least. So...as far as we know the network is still save. As safe as it can be, anyway. But besides that...man, who knows."

He scratches his hair.

"I doubt it, I mean, I don't think they even know most of us are here."

[spokethetruth]

It's obvious that, in some ways, Shep and the others are working in the blind just as much as him and Agent 3 are. He smiles sympathetically and shrugs.

"Thank you for explaining, at least," he says.

[eversohungry]

Vastra has a very bad feeling that the many of the rescue party who were absent had been discovered and imprisoned. The fact that their leaders seem not to know where they have gone to is disturbing alone, but only reinforced Vastra's commitment to staying as hidden as possible.

"It is difficult to trust someone who has not been entirely forthcoming with all information, I agree with you. However," Vastra smiles, amused and nostalgic. "The time lord I am here to rescue is much the same. He always lies. To keep people safe, to spare their feelings, to spare his own... he lies outright and by omission. So I find myself unable to be wholly discomforted by their hesitation."

She takes in the description of the young woman's power and nods. "I have a feeling we will need a healer before all of this is said and done, my dear. We are doing far too much talking for this to be a rescue mission, my experience tells me that much."

[woomy]

There never needs to be a reason to ink a place up. Gotta cover the turf and claim it.

Mammon will find that the ink is thicker than water, more like paint in consistency and opaqueness. The ink wants to glob together rather than spread thinly. The ink sticks easily to many things in many orientations, yet there are some surfaces it just drips off of instead of sticking. Metal, glass, and tarp are among some of the materials it won't stick to.

It still thin enough to shoot out of various weapons and allows for Inklings to swim through it... though the latter might be part of the Inkling physiology.

[woomy]

"I hope so. We'd all be toast if they knew, huh?" Just stating what's already be said. "Thanks though. I guess that means we don't have even more people to rescue."

[eversohungry]

"Hm," Vastra tilts her head at the frog, squinting back. Vastra, in contrast, does not remember Fantasma.

"Under certain circumstances, passing through the time vortex can reassign or strip certain characteristics if it's done clumsily. Or, perhaps, in a hurry?" Vastra offers pointedly. The rescue mission had moved out quite quickly. "In that case, usually the only way to restore things to normal is to return to one's original timeline."

[eversohungry]

...bees by breaking eggs. Certainly a curious turn of phrase, sir, and Vastra frowns and tilts her head to indicate she has no idea what he's getting at.

"I would agree that ground needs to be made, however I put forward that mounting an attack is not the sort of ground we wish to gain. If these are in fact robots-- metal-based humanoids-- it stands to reason they will simply manufacture or assimilate more. I've seen it happen before in my own timeline. We will lose more ground than we gain as they replace these 'managers' aggressively."

[hearted]

"I'll scout some out," Minako agreed. Excellent idea. "We'll just have to keep changing the place every so often and be careful about the group sizes we travel in. We've already lost too many of us."

That simple fact haunts her, but she won't let their sacrifices go to waste. She'll get stronger for everyone's sake.

[avidita]

Only for you, Sparks. Right now, however, they let the conversation be steered back towards business and nod. "And we currently have two to choose from. Someone taking the robots down, and others to gather the supplies our silver bot needs. It's just a matter of getting the best people for each job into place."