Scene #6719: Aboard a Ship of Black

Owner	Pose
Kalia	The Black Ship SULATH'S REACH. A black-painted Strike Cruiser, hard to see in the emptiness of space. A long ship, over four kilometers long and half of that tall. Armed for war, and yet completely silent. No hails are answered. No hums from the engines, as still as the ship. The Imperium refused to answer what was so special about it. They wouldn't reveal what was onboard and why they wanted it back. You were here to help get it back - or on your own - and that was all they'd entertain. Landing bay A-98 was still under Imperium control. It's the only one that'll open to welcome you, at least without force being involved. A shuttle is provided if you lack the means to get there yourself. As is the last transmission from the Sulath's Reach, given as justification for hiring you at all. ---- The holographic recorder shows a tall woman in heavy power armor. She's pale-skinned and bald, save for an incredibly long ponytail. Her mouth is covered by the massive collar of the power armor. She raises her hands. She doesn't speak, but makes rapid, complex signs with her hands instead. The holographic recorder seems to be translating from the sign language, providing subtitles: OTHERWORLDLY INTRUDER, PSYCHIC WARDING DAMAGED, PRISONERS LOOSE. EVEN BLANKS AFFECTED. REQUEST IMMEDIATE ASTRA TELEPATHICA INTERVENTION. CONSIDER SHIP CHAOS-TAINTED. RECAPTURE UNLIKELY. SUGGEST DESTRUCTION. She's interrupted when three people enter the room behind her. Two are dressed in rags, flanking a third, floating person. White-skinned, empty-eyed, dressed in a patchwork of blacks and with a scarf covering their mouth. The woman immediatly turns and lets loose three shots from her bolter - the two men in rags practically explode from the bullets' impacts, but Kalia vanished instead. The recording ends when Kalia reappears, much closer, and the armored woman starts rotting rapidly. ----
Kalia	A threat from the Multiverse justifies a similar response. And it spares the Imperium further manpower loss. You have three hours to retake the ship - past that, another Strike Cruiser has the order to move in and open fire. Arrival at bay A-98 shows that it's been barricaded like a fortress. Psychics amongst you feel a sudden... void, nothingness, like this part of the ship is meant to block psychic powers entirely. The quiet isn't necessarily bad, and you can overpower the field with effort if desired. Various Imperium soldiers are present - guardsmen outfitted with cream of the crop weaponry that would make even Karian squint, because that looks like entirely more budget than even his Marines get, men and women in robes covered in varying levels of cybernetics (including additional tentacle-arms affixed to their backs and shoulders, often, and rarely visible faces), and slightly more important-looking men and women in robes wearing symbols or wielding staves depicting a large I with an eye inside. They quickly identify the ship as belonging to the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, the Imperium's psychic branch. They explain an intruder bypassed the ship's countless psychic wards, empowered the prisoners and let them all loose. Now the wards are offline outside this cargo bay, and it's a matter of time before so many Psykers in one place lure Chaos forces like a lighthouse. And you can put it however you want, but that's in exactly no one's best interests. Not the Imperium's, not the prisoners'. Especially not the prisoners'. The prisoners tried to secure the bridge and the engine room before anything else. Guardsmen bravely gave their lives to damage systems enough to stall the ship from going anywhere for the next several hours. Likely longer. But without a doubt, the largest concentration of prisoners will be in those two locations. Of the ship's 50000-strong crew, there're about two hundred with you in bay A-98. Mostly the well-armed people. They estimate most of everyone else is either dead or insane by now, and if the roughly one thousand prisoners weren't considered so important, they'd have just bombed this ship and called it a loss already. It's your move.
Karian Icefang	Karian knew exactly what the duty of Black Ships like this was, and the fact that one turned out like this should not have happened. Still, it was his duty to investigate and see how bad the breach was. Striding out with his usual command squad, he gave quick motions for them to start to set up shop. He himself would be going inside with the rest of the multiversal arrivals, and didn't want to chance anything getting around them.
Sumiko	People argue about the value of the ship, it's crew, who's more heroic, and the like. Mikoto, who has already arrived, transformed and probably spooked some people with the power of ~Magical Girl Sparkles~, has decided that she was tired of waiting for people to win an argument. She just marches to the way into the interior of the ship, her jade sword over one arm as she simply enters and pushes her way forward. She's not afraid of no ghosts, and this will likely be a dangerous or costly mistake for her, but it beats playing who's the better protagonist. A few steps in and she pauses. The inside of this place was spooky. "Ok maybe I shouldn't have just marched in alone," she says, with a slightly worried tone. No no, it's fine! She can do this! Pumping herself up and pushing along.
The Janitor	Someone isn't at Bay A-98. Or, rather, not-someone isn't at A-98. Nobody isn't at A-98. Nobody fails to announce their presence to the proper authorities. Nobody is dressed in the uniform of a menial worker- a custodian, if an equivalent position exists in the Imperial Navy. Nobody is wearing a hat pulled down over her brow, the brim and her dark bangs obscuring her eyes. "Nobody" drifts through space without protective equipment, touches down on the underside of the Black Ship's hull, near where an educated guess based on similar ships indicates the munitions ought to be, and starts searching for a way inside. An airlock, a maintenance tunnel, or- failing that- simply a point where she can punch through a weakened or ill-maintained patch of hull and worm her way to the interior. Once she's in, she dusts herself off, straightens out the wrinkles, and adopts an Aura of I'm Supposed To Be Here. The madmen might still attack her, but in the chaos, it's unlikely her facade will be questioned... even when she starts walking towards her best guess for a weapons storage bay.
August Kohler	As the group arrives, August can feel the void. He looks at his mirror, and finds that he couldn't casually summon his Persona - it'd take some effort, though it'd be possible. That helps him understand what's going on faster than their explanation that this is a psychic ship. Once he hears them talk about 'prisoners' and that they're all dangerous psychics, August gets a picture, based on previous talks about the Imperium. They're psychic /slaves/. August won't stand for that. As he casually moves to head deeper towards where Kalia is thought to be, he has a plan. It's a stupid, insane plan. He wants to hear Kalia's side of the story. He wants to learn how he can help the prisoners. He wants to save them. He'll draw his pistol and knife to take out anyone casually in his way, but he'll sheathe it once he reaches Kalia herself. A sign that he doesn't plan to fight her, just yet.
Haguro	There's a lot of information to unpack, and not enough time to dig around about the details. Blanks? Astra telepathica? Just what kind of prisoners are they dealing with? Haguro gets a definition for the latter soon enough when the ship's ownership is revealed, but the thing about the blanks will have to wait as the more pressing matter of a threat to the general EVERYBODY is emphasized to her. The fact that everyone in the know is so hush hush about the prisoners has her suspicions raised, but she won't act on it just yet. No, she plays along for now: The Cruiser moves ahead with the group, keeping closer to walls and convenient waist-high cover when available while also making sure that she's within dramatic lunging distance of Mikoto. "We'll be safer moving as a group. But... Hm. If we see anyone that looks sane, we may be able to get more information from them if we leave them alive." Indeed, Haguro's not going to shoot to kill (yet). Her turrets are loaded with explosives and her revolver is ready for lesser threats, but she's keeping her finger off the trigger for now.
Gaonoir	The Imperium doesn't deal in pleasant things. They wanted a ship back, and aren't giving details about why lightly. There's probably chaos and cosmic horrors involved. A prospect that, unlike most sensible people, Erika actually gets a little excited about. This is the sort of conspiratorial interest she lived for... at least until it tried to eat them or something. Engines thrum off the bulkheads as the Dark Digimon and Tamer arrive, as Gaonoir is already in his jetpack-equipped advances stage. Bomber pilot scarf flutters a bit with the quick movements as he pulls up and retrofires a bit to brake, eventually coming to a hovering stop just over the deck and allowing Erika to hop off his back. Only to roll her eyes at the pseudo-political-moral argument going on over the radios and putting it out of her mind. She's already 'armed' with digivice in one hand. That's all she needs, when she's got the bionic jetwolf at her side as they follow after August. He's the boss, he's the man with the plan. A crazy plan, but that's what the duo are usually working with anyways, so Gaonoir doesn't have a problem with punching whatever gets in the way of August trying his crazy plan. And then punching them a way out if it doesn't work.
Lilian Rook	"Five hours. Got it." Lilian replied to the briefing, entirely too offhandedly. If corrected about it being three hours, she says "I know what I said." Because she also isn't obscenely stupid, she makes sure to secure at least some kind of airtight helmet with a respirator somewhere. The lightly armoured black bodysuit she's wearing is already good enough to connect a neck seal too. Bay A-98 makes her stop, just for a moment, and stare a slow circuit east to west across the ceiling, as if expecting to hear something in the rafters. "Hear that?" she says, pausing for a moment. "It's dead silent." Of course it isn't literally. There are plenty of people here. Lilian's hand slowly falls to the book in her carry case, and then her fingers jerk back as if shocked with static. "Well, that's how this is going to go, huh?" she asks no one. Truth told, Lilian had come to this hot off a kick of . . . something. Her distaste for the Imperium as a whole is completely naked, though the whole while it remains coldly bereft of heroic or humanitarian outrage. Her eyes betray a tiny spark of pity for the line soldiers of the Imperial Guard, but everyone else gets the look one would expect from an evil princess reclined atop a throne. She demands a map of the ship, downloads it to her smart insert, and then heads towards the bridge. That is to say, she doesn't walk. The artificial gravity severs around Lilian's feet, soundlessly drifting with the exact countenance of a ghost. Gliding at speed, she picks doors and walls that aren't plastered head to toe with wards (assuming any sane architect wouldn't shield every random closet, hallway, and gantry in the same way as the hull and prison bays) and fades through them, winding about the darkened ship like a phantom, centuries native to its chambers.
Staren	Staren has his own ship, but he takes the shuttle anyway because he doesn't want to get his stuff near this thing if he's not using it to fight. He's in his robot body today, but while he could have made it look human, he hasn't, to remind the Imperium that they needed help not just from a xeno, but from the only thing /even worse/ to racists everywhere, a /halfbreed/. Although every bit of information that comes in makes Staren want to help the Imperium LESS, this is still a shot at maybe confronting and taking out Kalia, so he's here. She'll probably be where there's a concentration of people, but that leaves two possibilities: The engine room and the bridge. Maybe the specific location isn't important. She's always shown herself to him briefly before, right? Maybe he just needs to go on. August and Mikoto go in and groups form around them -- he decides to follow the magical girl, in case Klia tries to exploit her. Anyone who attacks him is met with force to match their danger. A lone prisoner not well armed might be stunned or shocked, but a group trying to overwhelm him or someone with weapons that can actually damage him gets blasted by particle beams.
Kalia	The interior of the Black Ship is a massive, sprawling mess. In parts it feels entirely more like navigating the streets of a poorly lit, eerie city, than it does the bowels of a spacecraft. The bodies, left and right, do nothing to help the mood. Injuries are diverse - scorched by lightning, torn to shreds by bolter rounds, exploding heads. The last one is entirely too common for any comfort to be found. The moment anyone takes a step outside the bay, two things happen. One, they receive entirely too many 'good lucks' from the unwilling to proceed crew. Two, the screaming starts. There's an uncomfortable amount of magic in the air. Well, 'Warp energy'. Swirls of psychic currents that carry the screams of the damned, occasionally deciding to settle and echo in your skulls before moving on at random. Lesser minds would be driven to fear or madness immediatly. The psychic scream is a commonly known Psyker ability, but for it to linger like this, entirely too many Psykers had to be let loose at once. And you've only taken one step out of the bay! Luckily, the ship design is intuitive, and Lilian coerced a map out of one of the Astropaths. It's efficient, laid out like a city. Finding the bridge? Easy. The engineering block? Easy. The cells? Clearly labeled, and occupying several levels of the ship. But the bloodstains and the bodies are all generally headed away form there. Kalia likely emptied them already. The ship creaks ominously, at any rate. Without the ambient noise of its engines or most of its systems to cover up the endless rattle of its hull, it's almost worse than the screams. You just need to make up your mind about where to go. And hopefully, get there without meeting the fate of the crew. As for NOBODY IN PARTICULAR, the easiest way in is through any of the oversized missile tubes and a bit of force to pry them open. This would get her directly into one of the countless loading bays and ARMORIUM - get it right people, everything on these ships is Latin-named, especially the Restoriums and the Librarium - which is... what it says on the thin. It's a big room. With missiles the size of a house, that look like they need to be loaded MANUALLY, with ropes and chains. Probably by slaves. Assuredly by slaves. A lot of them are dead all over the place, and they're dressed the part. Mutants and heretics. Standard crewing procedure. A lot of the weapons were pilfered already. But these seem to be standard ship-to-ship combat missiles, not the orbital bombardment rounds she might have expected. Lilian personally elects to head to the bridge. Being able to skip through walls and pointless hallways helps a lot - there ARE wards in every single closet, for reference, on this particular ship, but they're all offline. First thing the prisoners did. It's smart, presuming they're all psychics and want to use their abilities. The lift leading to the bridge level is guarded, though. Half a dozen men in rags, looking unsettled, glowing with a stark black aura. One has a staff, bloodied, as if ripped from the hands of a crewmember. The other five have guns, covered in glyphs and lights, absolutely not standard-issue in the slightest.
Karian Icefang	Karian just shoots glances at everyone, a very telling thing for one who generally likes his allies here. But he turns and makes for the bridge. He moved up quickly, leaving everyone behind him. He needed to be alone for the moment, both to steel his thoughts as well as quel the beast raging at the chains from other discussions.
Sumiko	That scream is very off-putting, extremely off-putting even. Shuddering, Mikoto is really starting to regret her life's choice. FORTUNATELY for her Haguro catches up to join her little party. This, of course, is cause for them to join up with Lilian, who seems to know where to go because she had the foresight to get a map. Mikoto did not have the bravery to try dealing with this alone, so she sticks with the group as their path was blocked by apparently people in robes, glowing in a black aura, and looking generally like bad news block the path. Thinking about this, Mikoto stabs her sword into the ground, as a bit of light appears under her feet. From it rushes a few dozen rats, phantasmal rats, as they scurry and squeak and attempt to harass the men in black. Her goal was to try and distract them by leading them away from the ride up to the bridge. Or at the very least distract them.
The Janitor	The custodian slips through an empty missile tube, takes a soft breath of fresh air, and settles her hat firmly on her head. The psychic shrieks, the mind-clawing fear- her brain doesn't process them. There's no room for psychic agony or terror, not as an exertion of will, but as a fact of constitution. So she squares her shoulders, steps over a mutant corpse, and gets to work. The lower grade of ammunition is an obstacle, but not a fatal one. Less explosive means more precision needed. She tears cables out of the walls with her bare hands and hooks them up to the warheads, working briskly as she gets elbow-deep in the esoteric machinery. With some creative rearrangement of the chains and pulleys, she manages to heave one missile into its tube by straining her back and digging her heels in, managing as much work through her own heroic effort as an entire team of malnourished slaves. One of the other torpedoes she topples onto its back, so that it's facing aft and upwards towards the spine of the Black Ship itself. That one, she rigs up with cables on its thruster and its warhead. Finally, they're all tied off with a bow in a tumorous amalgamation of scavenged electronics and nonsense wires that'd give anyone without a PhD in bomb defusal a migraine, still hooked up to the walls in places. You know, normal things for a custodian to be doing. With that done, she leaves the torpedo bay, casually breaks the door to stick it in a 'shut' state on her way out, and heads in the direction of the engines with a trusty piece of rebar in her left hand.
Lilian Rook	The fact that it looks like this model of ship would ward a latrine against psychic powers doesn't do anything to inspire confidence in Lilian. In fact, it only darkens her mood throughout the journey. The fact that'd it'd all been taken offline anyways throws the exorbitant ends into even sharper, parodical relief, when she begins getting a sense for the sheer size of the baroque Gothic city she is left wandering around, made of hideous steel and resin, groaning like a derelict house. An unpleasant, sour taste rises in the back of her throat, followed with the mild precursors to a headache. It isn't the bodies that does it. She barely pays those any mind after assessing the first of each kind for their death wounds. The psychic screaming is something she quickly filters out. She calls on her basic training and the techniques she's had plenty of time to practice in the House of the Seven Worthies, shutting down unnecessary thoughts, bringing her energy sympathetically into her ears, and habitually focusing her breathing, until the psychic sound is tuned out. Half a dozen armed prisoners doesn't seem like much of a challenge, when she arrives. The light-sucking aura is more of what catches her attention. She brings that focus into all of her senses, metaphorically breathing it in, until she can pick out its identifying qualities. She already suspects very confidently that it's Kalia's doing, but she is paying special attention to the 'intensity' of its characteristics, with which to judge how much power she can imbue into so many gumbies in such a short period of time, and also to get an idea for how thoroughly the Warp has rotted the minds and bodies of the people underneath. When Mikoto finally catches up, not having the benefit of being some kind of half-ghost or something, Lilian silently holds her hand up in a military 'hold' gesture, which isn't really difficult to interpret. Mikoto instead sends the rats at the men, Lilian tilts her head from side to side a couple of times to weigh whether she is okay with this, and then deciding it's at least convenient for her, she- -----[stop]----- Lilian skips the guards while the horrid magic rats are bothering them, because she only needs to do one quick thing anyways. She wrenches the doors open by force, multiplying the energy applied to pulling them until they give, and then smacks the lift button. -----[start]----- -appears in the elevator capsule, which is now open somehow, and begrudgingly waves Mikoto on to catch it quickly, because she's already hit the bridge floor and it'll be closing already.
August Kohler	August decides to head to the holding cells, even as the psychic scream echoes through his head. He tries to shrug it off, but it still hurts and briefly causes him to clutch his head, until he pushes forward. His destination is the holding cells. If he can protect the prisoners there, if any are left, he will. Maybe they have a leader he can talk to. Maybe Kalia is there. "Keep your eyes sharp, you two. No telling what could happen." August tells Erika and Gaonoir.
Gaonoir	Gaonoir narrows his eyes behind his visor a bit, but with all the shit in life the Dark Digimon has been through the psychic torment is little more than an annoyance in the back of his mind, amongst the snarls and growls of his own black and figuratively bloody past. Shoved down in a corner when there's more important things to do. There's just the faint twitch of his big metal-clad hands clenching, but that could just as easily be the tension in the brawler ready to fight. Because even if they do find the ghost and try to talk to her, she's probably going to sic some of her enamoured charges on them anyways. Erika on the other hand just keeps her attention occupied with her device, using it and the link to Gaonoir's own heightened senses to monitor the surroundings of the ship as they proceed to the cells. If anything does jump out of the so-called shadows at them, the duo intend to catch it before it catchs them.
Haguro	That screaming sure is something. Asm uch as Haguro's trained her body to withstand physical trauma, having those kinds of noises ringing in her head is disorienting to say the least. She swings herself around to look behind herself at first, then forwards again and repeating the process several times before realizing it's likely the Psykers' doing. Alas, knowing why it's happening doesn't really make the terror any less... Terror-y. At least she's got allies around, even if she isn't quite sure what all of their motives are yet. The structure of the Astra Psychicala... Whatever it's called's ship has her wondering just how dangerous these Psykers are compared to what's being blown out of proportion, although even that is still in the context of having screaming going through her head every minute or two. Best to find these people sooner rather than later. Steeling her resolve (kind of), Haguro continues her advance towards the BRIDGE while trying not to look too freaked out (she still does). By the time the group trailing Lilian reaches the lift leading to the bridge, she... Well, at least the color's returned to her face. Holding her free hand up, she attempts to speak with the men in black cloaks. "Hold your.. Er. Brains! We mean you no harm." And then there's rats and doors being wrecked. Haguro's face loses color again as she tries to figure out how to salvage that. Turning her revolver around so she's holding it by the barrel rather than the grip, she keeps her unarmed hand free. Sure, she could always turn those turrets on those men in black, but for now... Maybe diplomacy. At the very least, she's still ready to body-check Mikoto out of harm's way if they do start firing. "We don't have much time. Tje Imperium is being... Um. The Imperium, so we'll need to act fast to get you out of here safely. Can I speak to your leader?" She's trying to radiate confidence as she says all this, but the screaming is really doing a number on that. She looks like she wants to try right now. STOP SCREAMING, DAMMIT.
Staren	Screaming in his head. Oh, /piss off/, Staren thinks at the screams. The radio discussion about the Imperium fills him with rage to the point that he's actually shaking, the utter WRONGNESS of the Imperium far stronger than any psychic screams. Eventually Mortimer sends him an itemized list of small but definite improvements the Imperium's making, which calms him down somewhat. Bodies are something he finds himself surrounded by all the time. Bodies are just meaty life-support systems for people. These are broken machines, the people they were supporting dead. Tragic, but not particularly horrifying as far as Stuff Multiversal Elites Encounter goes. He, Mikoto, and Haguro catch up with Lilian just in time for a fight. He hesitates when Lilian makes her 'stop' gesture, and then teleports again. Wait, if she's teleporting, how was that door opened...? Staren fires a couple of blasts at the robed prisoners and runs for the elevator.
Kalia	The path to the BRIDGE isn't too rough - and it's clearly where most of the fighting occured. Bodies start being more distinct - not just guardsmen anymore, but some prisoners eventually fell too. Or their heads exploded. They're of all ages; there are children and teens here, not just adults. And they were fighting, all of them. Occasionally, a body isn't quite dead - guardsmen sitting against a wall, mumbling about the veil and the images they see. Or ramming their heads against the walls, repeatedly, trying to make it all end. There's a reason these ships are so heavily warded - you just aren't supposed to put so many Psykers in one place. The veil between the Materium and the Warp frays every passing second, the mere passive presence of all these Psykers, unhidden, unwarded, awake and driven, like an invitation for Chaos to drop by and say hello. But there are, mercifully, no other obstacles along the way. Those headed for the BRIDGE eventually rejoin Lilian and Staren, only to see Lilian head up the elevator an instant later. * The aura around the prisoners is not the same kind of energy as the ever-growing Warp taint on the ship. It's very clearly meant to draw out and amplify negativity - and desires. Whatever these prisoners want, they now want it way more than before. It's probably making them somewhat stronger, too. But somewhat stronger isn't going to turn untrained Psykers into murderbeasts. Haguro approaches them first - the one with the staff glowers. "Our leader? You mean the one who freed us? They're on the bridge." Annoying magical rats interupt this, and then Staren just shoots one of them. "The fuck?!" the one with the staff exclaims. "You gods-damned traitors! You won't keep us from going back home! You can die along with those Imperium pigs!" The Psykers FOCUS THEIR MINDS. Their hatred for you turns into MIND BULLETS and LIGHTNING, which lashes out indiscriminatedly, rebounding off the black walls of the ship (harmlessly??) but being very, very dangerous to you alright. Those headed to the CELLS find that a few of the cells - cavernous, empty, depressing holes - still have prisoners in them. The ones who succumbed to the madness right away. The ones crying about Daemons, curled up in a ball at the end of their cells, or injured during the scuffle - or before they were imprisoned at all. ON THE BRIDGE ITSELF, Lilian arrives to find a sprawling mess of controls and consoles, entirely too large to be efficient. She might get a sense for why these ships crew people in the five digits. Kalia is sitting on the captain's chair, twirling his bloodied hat with one finger, while prisoners either mill about doing nothing, or try to get the controls working. None of them are doing a very good job of it. MEANWHILE, IN THE ARMORIUM, NOBODY leaves a hot tinkered explosive mess behind, headed to the engine block. It's halfway across the ship, which means RANDOM ENCOUNTERS. Or more specifically, it means a group of three prisoners, glowing black, are in her way, blocking the corridor she meant to use. They're busy taking up all the room by dismembering guardsmen with their own chainswords and yelling insults at them. They seem extremely deranged, and not just 'angry yelling'.
Haguro	THat's some good information to have. Now all Haguro needs to do is get to the bridge with Staren and Mikoto, talk to the-and then everything's suddenly turning into explosions and lightning and more freaky mind garbage. Plan B. Haguro zips over to try body-checking Mikoto out of the first volley of indiscrimnate fire, then starts sprinting about to keep her brain from being liquefied. It's mostly effective, although the blasts that do hit her leave her howling in pain before returning fire with her own turrets. Maybe they did deserve to stay here. Maybe they didn't. They're ready enough to fire at the slightest (okay maybe not so slight) provocation, though, so Haguro's willing to return the favor. "We're not trying to keep you from going home! Just calm down and let's start this over!" As Haguro yells the most useless thing someone can say in a tense situation, she fires off some explosives at the men in cloaks. To her credit, she does aim low, but she's also firing rapidly and without aiming very well with stuff that is generally associated with removing limbs from being anywhere near the blast radius. She's not thinking very well right now, but at least she has POWER to defend herself and her allies here.
Karian Icefang	Karian continues on his way to the bridge, running through prayers to drown out the voices of the warp. But the mere fact they were so strong was of concern. He picks up his pace and levels his bolt pistol right at Kalia once he gets near. "So your the one who caused all of this. Anything to say before your end?" He asks coldly towards Kalia.
Staren	Oh, whoops. It all happened so fast, he'd already started to fire when they started talking. He's barraged by MIND BULLETS. He turns on his forcefield partway through but it's not looking good after the first barrage. He holds out his hands in a STOP gesture. "Sorry, I thought you were mind-controlled! I'm just here to kill a ghost, what the Imperium's doing to you sucks and I hope you escape, okay?" He twitches his tail. And then he flies up the elevator shaft. No time for talking, he has a ghost to kill. Predictably, he just blasts the captain's chair with both beam cannons. It's like he told people yesterday: You can't argue morality into amoral beings. So there's no point in telling her she's wrong or pleading with her to do the right thing.
Lilian Rook	Lilian takes one look at the consoles, one look at the state of them and their design, and then hits the radio. "Staren. Get your ass up here." She's not some kind of gigantic backwards technology nerd who can make any of this work. She wants two particular things from the array, and Staren also wants something else. "I've found the Grudge Spirit again, and these consoles are a mess." Considering that the consoles need to be made use of though, as much as she might like to jump Kalia while she has the chance, she has enough tactical sense to realize that starting a bossfight here is counterproductive to her primary goal. Instead, she radios: "Someone else. Whoever's in the ship instead of following me like a chain of ducklings. Cause a distraction. Blow something up, kill a bunch of prisoners, I don't care." She doesn't like being forced to wait until someone grabs the evil ghost's attention, but Lilian bides her time.
The Janitor	"Halfway across the ship" likely means almost two kilometers. The custodian can't afford to casually mosey in that I Belong Here kind of way- she breaks into a sprint at speeds most people would be hard-pressed to match on a racing bicycle, tearing through the halls with her footsteps still scarcely louder than the average person's walking. With the three ex-prisoners running their chainswords, she hears them before they hear her, and slows down to a more measured and stealthy pace as she glances around the corner. Her mind plays through a dozen ways the fight could play out, with a healthy fudge factor for whatever that black glow is doing to them. It flickers across her vision, as vivid as a dream. Step forward, break the first one's skull with the piece of rebar, sweep the legs from the second one, shove the third. Snap the second one's neck by stomping, stab the third through the eye while he tries to get up. Her fingers twitch around her improvised weapon. But she doesn't. A whisper passes above the three prisoners as the Janitor runs up the wall, then onto the ceiling, expertly dodging their 'vision cones' and leaving scarcely a trace of her passage. Whether or not they notice her- an unlikely prospect, given her consummate skill and even her lack of emotional trace- she dashes around a corner and runs further towards the Engine room, faster than anyone but an Olympic sprinter could hope to follow. In a few minutes, it won't matter that she didn't kill them.
Sumiko	Mikoto gets a body check, saving her from being shot only to watch Haguro get a body shot instead. First, ow, and second /ow/. Getting back on her feet, she grumbles and smashes her blade into the ground once more. Her eyes light up as she stares right back towards the people shooting at her friend. The rats disappear... And an elephant small enough to fit in the corridor forms. It looks especially ill-tempered too, as it charges the cultists, and attempts to simply run amock, causing property damage, chaos, and to hurt people who hurt her new friend. "There, that should count as a distraction, let's go up to see this ghost?" she asks Haguro.
August Kohler	There's a few prisoners in the cells. August steels himself, seeing their madness. He wants to help them. He needs to get them to a doctor. But he doesn't have a ship... Staren has a ship, so August makes a deal, and then heads over to the prisoners. "I don't know if you can understand me, but I'm getting you to safety. Away from the Imperium. Gaonoir, grab those who need carrying. I'll help." August doesn't summon his Persona - he worries they might think it's some sort of daemon or something. Instead, he moves over to the least violent looking psyker, and tries to help them up. From there, August will start looking for exterior ship exits. As they try and lead the prisoners out, they'll need to find somewhere to get them to Staren's ship, that isn't the same exit that the Imperium is guarding. August is willing to carve a hole in the ship if he needs to.
Gaonoir	Erika nudges Gaonoir in the side at August's orders, and points him towards some of the prisoners that look a bit more on the frantic side. "Maybe getting them away from this place will help." Or maybe not, but that's besides the point. Gaonoir lets out a huff and nods. "As long as I ain't gotta teleport with them." Other than that, he's more than strong enough to carry some thugs around. And continue shoving down the psychic mururs out of sheer will and egdyness. The tall digimon strides over, and doesn't bother with gentle formalities that aren't likely to get more than flailing responses, he just grabs and yoinks a few psykers, grappling as necessary to just toss them over his shoulders. "Let's get these sorry sods out of here. This place is starting to even make my fur bristle."
Kalia	Kalia's eyes move to look at Karian; their body doesn't follow in the slightest. Pale-skinned and skeletal, they're the spitting image of a specter. Their scarf doesn't even move when they talk. "Hello to you as well," they simply say. Kalia doesn't stir, but the prisoners seem to snap to attention, seeing their savior threatened. Then Staren shoots. The captain's chair does not survive the exchange. Kalia had the foresight to move - or rather, to just be behind Staren, rather suddenly. They put the captain's hat on his head. "Why are you mad at us? We're doing what you asked last time. Remember? You said you wished we used our powers for more heroic purposes. These prisoners didn't want to die. They wanted to go home." Their arm gestures towards the now agitated, evil-aura'd prisoners. Some are children indeed. Some are teenagers. Some are old men. The Imperium doesn't care. They're all Psykers. "Isn't this heroic? We gave them the means to achieve what they wanted most. Freedom." Kalia glances at the consoles. "Well... it turns out operating a ship is hard. So, they're definitely not going anywhere at this rate. None of them are engineers or techpriests." Kalia warps to Staren's other side. "What will you do? Let them all die when that other ship's fear and paranoia balloons and they open fire? We don't mind either way. We're curious to see what you think, though." The air in the bridge grows thick. The Psykers are becoming more and more agitated at the inevitable fight. It's... doing something to reality. Spreading waves, ripples that are tearing at the fabric of whe Materium. These people don't control their powers, they're buffed, and they're getting agitated. DOWNSTAIRS, Haguro and Mikoto ensure the men are distracted alright - and not even lethally! Painfully, no doubt, but occupied enough they won't be firing more MIND BULLETS at them. The path to the Bridge is open again! NOBODY IN PARTICULAR makes a run for it. Luckily, there are means of transport on the ship. Shuttles, elevators, speedlifts. Halfway across isn't too dramatic, with her know-how. The prisoners are too busy dismembering their captors to notice her, expertly passing overhead. Reaching the engine room(s) isn't too hard. The massive messes of machinery, cold and silent, were indeed sabotaged. Grenades have blown up here and there, wrecking important pieces of the puzzle or lighting unforgiving fires. It's hot, and the smoke is toxic. Despite this, prisoners toil. They scream, they cry. WE WANT TO GO HOME, glowing black, driven to pursue this thing with all their might. The flames and toxic fumes consume them little by little and they ignore it, trying to move and fix the machinery. IN THE CELLS, August and Gaonoir begin moving the prisoners they can. The wounded ones are easiest to move, they generally don't fight back. The maddened ones scream, calling you Daemons, mumbling about your claws and your maws. The veins on their heads pulse unnaturally, and a current of psychic wind and screams seems to make it a thousand times worse, the prisoners clutching their heads for comfort.
Staren	Staren turns, but Kalia keeps moving, and talking. He... lowers his weapon-arm. "Is that really it? I thought you were just taking advantage of them to spread chaos." Staren starts pacing. "Well. Unfortunately, they can't go home, even with a ship, because their own people will try to kill them. Even with your help, they won't survive it. BUT... what if they went somewhere else? There's a whole multiverse out there of people who AREN'T super keen on blood sacrifices. However, we'd need some way to get everyone in the landing bay off this ship or they'll just cause a problem." Staren turns to the prisoners on the bridge. "What do you think? 'Home' isn't the places that sent you to die. How would you like to find a new home in the Multiverse?"
Sumiko	Mikoto looks proud of her work, this will distract them for a while. The sword on her shoulder again, she walks to the lift and calls it down. Waiting for Haguro to catch up before hitting the up button and heading to the bridge. On the bridge is a sight, eyes narrowing in on what is happening. Negativity pouring in from literally everywhere is stifling, her mouth tries to swallow and it feels like she's drowning in the stuff. She wants to cry, she wants to run away, she wants to not be here... Instead, Mikoto takes a shaky step onto the bridge, followed by a second one. "Are you actually trying to be heroic, or are you just trying to torture people for the fun of it, talking witch?" She says, towards the others. "I don't want to hurt you, people but right now a lot of people are suffering. Why don't we just get them out of this shitball universe and somewhere where they can live in peace?" She asks Staren. She isn't aggressive, buuuuut...she will defend herself. Though her desire to just punch the problem is increasing, like a scratchy clawing on the back of her awareness.
Gaonoir	Gaonoir just snorts softly, almost in amusement even as he's wrangling deranged men to follow after August. "Heh. Daemon. Been called worse." Can't really blame them, he does have sharp fangs and dark colorings. But while he can just stubbornly will his way through the Psyker mind screwing, Erika isn't quite so resiliant and keeping close to his side. OTher than occasionally ducking a flailing arm or leg from his erratic passengers. "We need to get off the ship. Getting them to one of the other ships isn't as difficult as long as we avoid our, ah, hosts." Keeping herself focused on the issues at hand is the best defense she's got, to not let the eerie mental shouting get to her.
The Janitor	The oppressive psychic aura rolls off of the custodian like water off a duck's back. The heat has preternaturally little effect on her as she consciously regulates her micro-muscular movement and sweating to improve insulation. The toxic fumes- they may be more of a concern later, but for now, she can hold her breath. These engines are wrecked, and fixing things is not in her vocabulary. But maybe she can get what she wants by breaking them just a little more. Fumes mean there's still fuel. She starts searching along the piping with her hands, feeling for which ones are hotter or coldern than the others, and trying to find any relevant weak-points in the design. In short, she's trying to flood the engines with the remaining fuel, then electrically ignite it in an uncontrolled detonation to force the ship to lurch and start accelerating forwards. Forwards, towards the Strike Cruiser that's on standby with a hair trigger. Assuming she can manage that- and before the no-doubt-furious psykers can descend on her- she reaches into the ship's electronic guts and presses two live wires together, sending a surging signal to the torpedoes she's rigged up in the ammo depot. The first torpedo- the one facing upwards and inwards- will streak up through the floors to as close to the bridge as it can get, and then explode, hopefully taking out the bridge or at least damaging it enough that the ship can no longer be steered off its disastrous course. The second torpedo- the one she loaded into a tube- will fire in the general direction of the standby Strike Cruiser, armed on a proximity fuse. It's unlikely that it'll do much as a single shot, but it'll hopefully bait the other ship into retaliating. And third: after that, all of the other ship-to-ship torpedoes she's rigged should detonate simultaneously, hopefully taking a nice, juicy chunk out of the Black Ship's hull.
August Kohler	August is stronger than an average human by far, even if he's not as strong as his Persona. He helps carry the wounded, and starts surveying for either exit ports or windows or walls not too thick that he can cut a hole into. As he does so, he shouts to the maddened ones. "Come on! Do you want to die here?!" If August finds an exit, he calls Staren, and tries to organize with him where to park his ship to pick them up, if he can. <"I've got them. Can you bring the ship here?" If he needs to cut a hole in the wall, he waits until Staren's close enough to start picking them up, and summons Dietrich, planning to use the corrosive darkness to cut an opening in the hull. As soon as the ship is close enough Staren can stop them from dying in space, of course.
Lilian Rook	Lilian appears behind Staren and backhands him across the back of the head. "The console you idiot! Stop talking to the evil genie you just shot at! Get out your ridiculous boy genius toolkit, splice whatever you can together into a single input/output unit, and turn the fucking wards back on you absolute buffoon! Do you even know what's about to happen if we let this many of these people run around oozing their taint all over the ship?!" Of course he doesn't, because Lilian hadn't told him. Her tone is entirely, genuinely urgent, however. Not smug and shitty. She is insisting he get to work, and that they don't have time for this. She also didn't say what she wants the console for herself, but nobody else needs to know that. "Tick tock! We don't have time for this! Even with your idiotic plan of trying to take them somewhere else, they're all going to die anyways if you sit around navel gazing about whether the evil ghost is doing the right thing or not!"
Haguro	That'll do. Limping a bit as Haguro steadily recovers the feeling in her legs, she offers the cloaked men half-bows in passing. "Just... Sit tight, okay? We'll be back for you!" She tries to bolster their confidence at least a little after all the explosions, hurrying to catch up with Mikoto in that elevator before they head right on up. Aaaand it's even worse upstairs. It's a familiar feeling, and Haguro doesn't even look surprised when she sees the culprit. Hears part of her conversation with Staren. Sees August working on getting the wounded gathered so they can actually get out of here instead of trying to convince Kalia of one thing or another. Also, she swears she heard something explode. It's probably nothing from nobody. "Miss Rook has a point. Kalia, help us, and then you'll have more opportunities to do... Er." She gestures around vaguely, trying not to ook too closely at the terror dripping from the everything that has Haguro still looking like she's become human enough to shit herself. "I'll work on getting the rest of them up here so we can go!" And then Haguro goes right back down. Those half-dozen men in cloaks might be injured, and lifting them in a heap of bodies might make their injuries worse. It's still better than being dead, though, so Haguro just works on hoisting them all (with creative use of a chain knife cannon to wrap them all up) onto her shouldres and getting back up to the bridge!
Kalia	"We don't take advantage. We don't spread chaos," Kalia says. They adjust their scarf, but it remains unmoving as they talk, their voice oddly echoing. "We answer calls. And this ship called to us so loudly, we couldn't ignore it." Kalia turns to look at Mikoto, warping out of view abruptly to be behind her. "We have nothing to gain through torture," they start - but something glimmers in the corner of their eyes, and their glowing white eyes fall on Mikoto's Soul Gem. Their one hand reaches out, to touch and feel it - and they are interrupted when the ENTIRE SHIP RUMBLES. Missiles detonate. The ship is torn in half, the rear separated from the front by a calamitous blast. Luckily, not one of you was in the direct middle of the ship. Unluckily, this splits Jane off from everyone else, the engine block now floating away from the rest of the ship. And the Strike Cruiser, in the distance, is hit by a missile. Its shields take the blow, lucky it. But it turns its attention on the Sulath's Reach rather obviously and begins its approach. Your deadline just got a lot closer. Kalia looks about; the prisoners panic. The veil between the Materium and the Warp is fraying to such a degree that space outside is starting to become... multicolored? That's not normal. Neither are the eyes and maws in the shadows, the flaming blades and the deformed tentacles and limbs. The Psykers are becoming anchors for the Warp and its denizens. Kalia floats away from the party. It seems they're done being helpful and just want to observe now. But they do chime in. "We wonder if that's such a bad thing. The Warp, we mean. That other ship couldn't hurt us there." You'd have other problems, but hey. IN THE CELLS, the hull proves... resistant. It seems whatever metal it's made of is psychic-proof. With effort, his Persona still cuts through, but it takes entirely more than it should have. Especially with the ship getting rocked so hard by BLOWING UP IN HALF. But he IS getting those people out and safe, if Staren's ship can reach them. They're in no state to punch back.
The Janitor	The Janitor walks to the jagged edge of the back half of the ship, whipping air swirling around her like a hurricane as it's sucked into the void, and stares at the other front half in the distance. They're probably doomed, she figures. "Probably" isn't good enough for a professional. She takes a running leap into the void, parkouring between house-sized pieces shredded hull and pulverized rooms while dodging whickering cables and bullet-like shrapnel. She takes it like a zero-gravity platforming level, expertly leaping for where pieces of the expanding debris cloud will be and accelerating to improbable speeds in the frictionless vacuum. Finally, she sticks a three-point landing in a gaping hole on the front half and clambers inside, shaking herself off and taking a healthy breath of air after the harrowing spacewalk. 'The Warp', they said. That's what they're pinning their hopes on. She starts heading towards the Warp Engine, a piece of broken glass clutched in her hand like an improvised shiv. Everyone still in this spaceship, dead before the dawn.
Lilian Rook	The ship suddenly rumbles to a degree so preposterous that even Lilian, far from an expert on even normal space ships, can tell that it wasn't just her call for a distraction. Something seriously, very very wrong had just happened. The ship is probably about to fall to pieces in the next block of time. Lifting off her feet rather than stumble around inelegantly under the shock, she turns to look out the ridiculous bridge screens, and sees the shimmer of the second missile impacting the cruiser's shields. This is fine. She'd planned to exterminate the prisoners anyways. When Kalia disappears to see what the hell just happened, Lilian groans "Finally." and then- -----[stop]----- Lilian draws her sword with a sound like a rasping iron bell, advancing on the panicking psykers in the bridge. Since they couldn't work the consoles anyways, they are of negative utility to what she needs, creating an anchor point for the horrors she can just begin to glimpse in the same room. Moving quickly from pysker to psyker, she puts the dark and uncanny blade through each of them, skewering hearts and brains with edges that smoke and miss where they carve the substance of the Other --the Outsider-- and burn it to ash. -----[start]----- -she teleports into the middle of the bridge, and all around her, terrified prisoners become a fireworks display of gushing blood and tangles of carved flesh. She jabs importantly at the half-jury rigged wiring, advancing menacingly back on the group. "Don't make me remind you again. This is already your fault for mucking about and getting distracted by the evil ghost stalling you for so long, instead of getting any idea of the ship's status."
Sumiko	That awful choking sensation tightens around her neck when Kalia's eyes fall on her. That hand reaching out for her soul gem cause her to try and stagger back and away. This is awful, it's awful...she can't breathe... And then the ship rocks from explosions and throws her to the ground and distracts the ghost for a moment. Ow. She gets a nice view of the ceiling of the ship, lifting herself back up to her feet. Only to see the horrors starting to bleed into reality. Only to look slightly to the right when...a bunch of prisoners explodes into blood and gore. She looks pale, and then green and then turns to one side of the bridge to start throwing up. Too many images running through her mind right now. Tears welling up, she can barely control her emotions nevermind actively try and help.
Gaonoir	"Gaonoir," Erika murmurs after a moment to keep her wits in order. "If this ship was designed to hold powerful psychics... I mean, I don't know the exact things Personas work on but it seems similar?" "I think I get your point." The digimon's eyes narrow a bit. Shame his arms are full of prisoners so he can't just punch the hull open, but that's not the only trick he has. "Just hang onto me, the room's gonna blow out once it's broke." Erika nods and pushes one of the squirming prisoners over enough to grab onto his side. Though that may also be because the ship is getting knocked about. "They're firing on it, we're running short on time!" You know how the old fairy tale goes involving big bad wolves. Gaonoir does much the same, moving as if sucking in a deep breath. "HOWLBACK CANNON!" Then lets it loose, 'sonic rings' visual effect and all, the hypersonic pulse hitting the spot in the hull August is trying to break through with tremendous pressure. Gaonoir can't teleport this big of a group directly, but he can help fly them out once there's an opening and to the other ship. Preferably before they're all dead or blown up. Yes, those are two different things. Blowing up he can survive. But dead is dead.
Karian Icefang	Karian curses as the ship is hit by missle fire. "Damn it. Ragnarok, get in position and screen the missiles!" He says into his coms, his strike cruiser moving into position to guard the ship. Then, to Kalia. "No....your just like Chaos. Feeding on the weak, the downtrodden." He says, firing his pistol towards Kalia. "What is asked of you all may seem horrible, yes. But know that you are going not to die, but rather to live forever at the side of the Emperor. You have all been given a gift greater then any that we Astartes could ever hope to aspire to. It is all of you who are the true heroes of the Imperium." Karian says to the Psykers, trying to break through whatever held them....at least until Lilian just up and killed the prisoners. He glares with ice cold fury, and pulls forth his sword from his back. "What did you do?!" He screams at her, the beast inside snarling and pulling at the chains, begging to be set free. "They did not need to die. They could have been saved!"
Staren	Lilian slaps a combat robot body. It gets Staren's attention, though. He walks over to the consoles to try and assess the damage, when the ship shakes, and a console helpfully reports the engines gone. Okay. So, he needs to get the wards back on, and the warp drive working to get them out of there. And he needs to help August. He's told Karian to get the prisoner-crew in touch with someone who can help them. One down... And then UN-down as Lilian... that's not teleporting. Oh. He's stunned for a moment at this, but then... "Haguro. Mikoto. Come with me and bring them." And then he turns around, blasts the window with everything he's got, and, hopefully, gets sucked out into space where he and anyone who follows him, and also August and friends, can get beamed up by his ship. Lilian can and will kill everyone on the ship. It has no use anymore. The prisoners that weren't on the bridge are already doomed, but MAYBE Lilian won't expect this and he'll be able to save a few.
August Kohler	As Gaonoir fires his named attack at the hull, August adds in one last charge of corrosive darkness to melt the hull into nothing. "Come on! We're almost there!" The ship rattles from the explosions, August grabs a wall, and continues his carving, but it's shakier. He curses at whoever blew up the ship, but keeps going. The explosion wasn't in the holding cells. They should be fine, right? And then, when it breaches, he gets ready to be spaced. This isn't going to be pleasant, but Staren's going to beam them up, so...it should be okay. Suffocating in space is agonizing, right? Staren, please save us.
Haguro	It's still salvageable. Sure, the ship might be a little in-half, and space might be turning into a kaleidoscope of confusing colors that don't make sense while monstrous entities from probably-another dimension threaten to tear everyone here to bits, but the situation can still be managed! Haguro's already thinking up her own master plan, too, as she prepares herself mentally to transform while waiting for that lift to reach the bridge. And then several of the people on the bridge explode violently. Holding her breath and a straight face, the Cruiser doesn't even move from the elevator as Staren gets her attention and puts a hole in the ship. That will have to do. Turning over to her shoulder-based Psyker cargo, she holds a finger up to her lips in the universal sign of DON'T MAKE A NOISE before taking a running jump with the half-dozen rescuees into the vacuum that's just been opened up. If Mikoto isn't moving on her own volition, she'll reach out to yoink the girl with her free arm as well! This is not how she expected this to go at all. To be fair, she didn't plan a thing.
Lilian Rook	"Hmmm?" That's the one sound Lilian makes when she turns to look at Karian. Slowly. Dully. Like beholding a worm. Floating off the floor by two feet, she can look down on him too. "I'm sorry, did you say something? That's an odd thing to accuse me of. To me, it looks like they all just blew up from that psychic exertion. You saw it on the way here. Hundreds of ruptured heads and bodies." She isn't the slightest bit insistent or offended in tone. Not even trying to sound shocked or accused or aggrieved. She speaks in the voice of someone who seems very slightly surprised that a lesser being had deigned address her. The amount of contemptuous, otherworldly, dark pressure that a girl two thirds his size can exude is genuinely staggering. "Aren't we very lucky for that, too? If they'd gotten any more agitated, this entire bridge would be swimming in daemons. Just like the rest of the ship is about to be, no doubt, after you simpering children spent so long deliberating. Though, I don't care that much that you've doomed them." That part, at least, is truthful. Even if Lilian has to flick a literal child's blood off the back plate of her suited hand, they were all warp anchors. Hazard vectors. Not people. Compromised and infected by the Other. When Staren actually gets the console operating though, she does linger behind for a while. Seemingly not too worried about the disaster yet, knowing there's still a lot of distance between herself and the problem, she sets about rooting through the ship's databanks, collecting an extensive pile of information on the Black Ship itself, its registration, its course chart, its specifications, and the prisoners and crew it was carrying, compiling it into a beefy data file for her own use. She also scans the map for locations primarily responsible for the big psyker suppression fields/wards/mcguffins, rather than the ones unfiformly painted into the walls.
Kalia	Kalia is shot at again. Unceremoniously, there is a huge hole in their chest. It's pretty skeletal under their patchworked rags. And void-y. They roll their eyes, and adjust their scarf again. "Rude." Then all the Psykers on the bridge just drop dead. Kalia seems disappointed. "We see. That's what you chose, then. Interesting. We like it," they begin, before turning to Mikoto, the crying mess. "We can just find someone else to help. There's always someone else in need of help. What about you? You wear your emotions on the outside. That's so strange. We'd like to--" Be friends. They were going to say, be friends. Staren blasts the window open. The air is sucked out, Kalia remaining still as they hover in place. "Really rude." Kalia disappears. They're done here. MEANWHILE, NOBODY literally parkours an exploding spaceship hull to reach the other side. The Warp-Drive is... damaged, quite badly. Like a massive wizard's tower, arcing blue lightning from massive generators. It even has doors to go inside, like a wizard's tower! Let it not be said the Imperium can't design its ship interiors. But it's unguarded. And you don't need to know how it works to plant bombs. Hey on the bright side Lilian is right, the ship stopped fusing itself into the Warp quite as much! That's nice.
Sumiko	Mikoto can only focus on being sick for a few moments, looking pale as she finally calms down enough to look back at the room. She feels numb, and she knows that's bad...she has to try...something? She doesn't know what to do, and effort is starting to look like too much. Kalia asks to be her friend, and she looks towards the ghost. Well, she doesn't get to say 'friends' just that she would like something... She feels an arm around her as Haguro drags her to her feet and pushes her towards the way out Staren made. Which is, of course, being sucked into outer space. Now it goes from not being able to breathe very well, to not being able to breathe period, and also freezing cold. This is awful.
Staren	Vacuum sucks. One by one, every few seconds, people are turned into red-white energy pulses which zoom off towards the house-sized castle floating in space. First the prisoners, then the others, and lastly, Staren himself. Hub - SSC Stranger than Fiction (Location #0) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The walls, floor, and ceiling of the Stranger than Fiction's lower deck are covered with a facade that makes the structure look as if it is constructed of large stone bricks. The 'hub' room is about 25x15' across and about 7 1/3 feet tall. The teleporter pad is in the fore-starboard corner, the doorway to the lab is in the center of the fore wall, and the doorway to manufacturing is in the center of the aft wall. A spiral staircase to the guest area and the residential deck is in the aft-port corner. Through thick transparisteel windows, you can see space outside. Large storage cupboards are against the walls here. A large hatch in the floor can open to lead to the airlock. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A gynoid with bright purple hair and a simple black dress is pulling people off the pad as fast as they're beamed in, slapping nanobandages on those who look injured. Finally just after Staren appears, there's a sort of buzzing humm all throughout the ship for a few seconds, rising in pitch, and then there's a flash of light and the stars outside the window go all streaky. "Well." Staren comments as he surveys the scene. "That went horribly. Okay, who's in good enough shape to talk? Move?" He starts examining anyone who's nonresponsive.
Karian Icefang	With all the explosions and vaccum's being opened, Karian took the moment to slip his helm onto his head. Now the steely gaze of a wolf skull looked over the scene of loss. He turned and shook his head, rage growing stronger. Moreso as he had nothing to exact a form of payback onto. "The next time you show up, Ghost....I am finding a way to end your pitiful existance."
The Janitor	The custodian doesn't have bombs, and she doesn't know how the sparking warp-tower works. She doesn't need to. She slams the door open, takes one step inside, rearranges the components with an artisan's intuition so the tower's energy focuses inwards to a breaking point, and then promptly bails like hell. She sprints to the side of the ship, finds a gaping hole, and- just before the warp drive can explode in whatever grotesque spacetime-hell-tangle-firework it's going to do- leaps out. If her intuition's correct, the blast-wave is going to back-boost her at alarming speeds... Right onto the Stranger than Fiction's hull. She lands with a clunk that's easily missable over the sound of the FTL drive spinning up, and drives her glass shiv into a crevice in the ship as a piton. It crosses her mind, briefly, to try and sabotage this ship too. But that's a bit too much of the scorpion-and-toad. So she relaxes- as much as anyone can possibly relax while holding onto a spaceship that's FTL-jumping- and checks her phone. It pings green. Mission Complete.
Gaonoir	Once the psykers are being teleported away Gaonoir lets them go, until the last burdern is off his shoulders. He scoops Erika up with one now free arm. <<Worry about your new guests,>> he comms Staren's ship. <<I can get us over.>> He can handle the two of them, the pair disappearing in a blorp of black and purple against the spacefield behind them. A similar blorp deposits them bother inside the Stranger amongst the others, Erika landing with a thump on her rear as Gaonoir reverts to his base form just as the transpositioning ends. "Sorry 'bout that." Erika shakes her head, and leans over a little to rub her bum before getting up. "It's okay. Didn't expect that to drain you." "It didn't," Gaonoir replies as he folds his arms. "I devolved as I jumped, takes less energy."
Lilian Rook	Staren blows a giant hole in the ridiculous bridge window, exiting into space and letting enormous quantities of air start blasting out as well. "You stupid-" -----[stop]----- "How are you simultaneously a little bit smarter, and vastly dumber than I thought?" muses Lilian out loud, to absolutely nobody. While she has Time, she just completes her data raid, artificially extending her search and download process by several minutes, inserted into the infinesimal gap between the smallest unit of temporal measurement. Grabbing exactly what she wanted, she disconnects from the terminal, and falls back to phase through the floor. She forgets to bring Mikoto with her. Disappointed in not having enough time to properly root through the ship for the second thing she wanted, but satisfied that her premonition had lead her exactly to the thing she wanted most, and accurately forecast the . . . main-ish threat, Lilian reluctantly heads to one of the escape pods and punches the button while the metaphorical WARNING: SELF DESTRUCT IN 9:59:59 counter is still stuck there. -----[start]----- Lilian, inside of the launching pod, radios the mission all clear transmission to the strike cruiser, and begins uploading her recordings. Of course they only pick up things in real time, but that's fine.
Haguro	Space is a bad place to be in. It's a lot colder and less breathable than Haguro would have guessed from all those od movies she's seen. Part of her wonders if she's going to die out here, surrounded by also corpses and turning into a... Space Abyssal or something. That'd be terrible. Alas, she doesn't get to see just what would happen if she really did die in the sea of stars, what with being pulled into something distinctly less nightmare-inducing. Maybe the cloaked prisoners won't freak out when they get their shit together, too. "I'm still alive. Ehm... Kohler? Mikoto? Gaonoir? Um... Everyone else?" She looks from person to person to see who is and isn't missing limbs, pausing on Erika for lack of having her name. She could've sworn they had met before. She then turns back to the half-dozenish prisoners. "I told you we'd get you out. Focus on recovering, and then..." Haguro swallows, then finally speaks firmly for the first time this entire mission. "I have a proposal for you when you're ready."
Kalia	People evacuate how they can. The Inquisitor onboard the Strike Cruiser <HAND OF MARS> gets into an angry cussing match with Karian's captain. Via his Astropath. So it's basically two angry dudes shouting at their psychics to tell the other side how angry they are, probably. And Karian's guys are vikings, they're a lot better at being rude. The Inquisition is a lot better at being offended. Once everyone is safe, they are given a spectacle. The Warp-Drive implodes. Like a terrible, multicolored hole in reality. A tear, straight through the Materium, glancing into the Warp itself. To LOOK is to know madness, and somewhat painful for the mind. Those who brave it anyway see a large being bursting out of the black hole, like a composite of a thousand human bodies, formed into a mass of tentacles, eyes and maws. It shrieks. It flattens. It goes into FTL. It's gone.
August Kohler	August safely gets to the ship, and breathes once he's there. He moves over to guard the prisoners, not quite trusting anyone but Staren and his allies, and speaks simply. "They need a doctor. I know one. If you want to recruit them, then wait until they're sound of mind and can consent. But if you're going to hurt them, no way in hell. That's not your plan, correct?" As the warp-drive implodes, August turns away, only seeing it at the last moment, and covers his mouth. Briefly, he wants to vomit, but he needs to be stronger than that. Especially as a leader.
Sumiko	MIKOTO! IN! SPAAAAAAACE! Is awful. Everything is terrible, she has no idea if she'll just die, and then come back repeatedly until she just becomes a wit- Then she lands on the launch pad, only to be escorted off by the robot who places her somewhere. She's coughing and trying to calm her breathing down while shivering and trying to warm her body and overcome frostbite. Fortunately, she does not know that Lilian forgot her. However August says he knows a doctor. "You don't mean...her?"
Staren	"Honestly I haven't had time to make a plan. But I want them to choose their own destiny. I didn't use factional resources this time, so I don't have to justify anything to the Concord." Staren explains. He glances at the window, then Mikoto. "Who?" Then back to August. "Once we're out of Imperium space, I can take us to a warpgate or any space destination you need. Err..." He looks to Haguro. "Although, I think we should listen to Haguro first. This trip is going to take several minutes, anyway."
Haguro	Aguust actually has a point there. Haguro nods slowly as she closes her eyes, then slaps her knees before hopping onto her feet. "Okay. Emphasis on 'when you're ready'. Until then... Ah. Mister Staren? Do you have anywhere I can prepare some drinks for everybody?" The Cruiser chuckles lightly, finally sounding relaxed after the whole debacle that was seeing people explode and getting guts on her face. She still probably has some in her hair, too.
Gaonoir	Erika holds up her device intending to get a few scans of the phenomenon, but Gaonoir is quick to cover her eyes with one of his metal palms. "Hey!" "Let the device record, but don't look at it directly." "What about -you-?" The wolf makes a face as the THING briefly emerges from the tear in reality. "I'm the one that's already fragged in the head." Thankfully it's gone as the entire event collapses on itself. "Aaaaand now I see why they don't like the Warp. Be glad you didn't."
Staren	Staren points up. "Kitchen's up two floors." On the way there, she'll also see the guest room. It has sofas, beds, and flatscreen TVs. The guest room looks like modern turn-of-the-millenium Earth, and the kitchen returns to the juxtoposition of medieval facade/furnishings and futuristic appliances. There's sweet tea, milk, and chilled water in the fridge, and also a soda dispenser. It has an on-screen tutorial to walk her through using it if need be.
Sumiko	Mikoto shakes her head, waving Staren off. Right now she's too busy looking miserable and talking to a stranger, while also about to yell at a guy over the radio. She's pretty much had too much excitement today. "S-something warm please?" she asks Haguro, she really needs something warm.
Staren	There's also some teas and hot chocolate in the cupboards. It doesn't look like Staren goes through them much, though. If the prisoners are well enough to walk, Staren will encourage everyone to go up to the guest room since it's more comfortable than sitting/lying on the floor. The gynoid brings the prisoners spare tablet-radios. Staren asks of Gaonoir and Erika, "So, long time no see, how've you two been, anyway?"