Scene #9280: CAVE AND BONFIRE (1)

Owner	Pose
Redshift Operators	Welcome to INTERSTELLAR FRONTIERS ONLINE 2! Those who chose to log in via VR link are treated to a long cutscene for IFO2's 'Sector Pioneers' expansion, which seems to have come out recently. Registering isn't difficult, but only the Horologium-provided accounts seem capable of accessing a game server called the 'Cavemouth Network'. That's where the transmission station can be found. Those who choose to come here in vehicles of their own, or even on foot... find spaceworthy retrofits for their chosen vehicles, thruster harnesses for zero-G maneuvering, transponders and transmitters, and for the on-foot types, even a few seemingly 'abandoned' spacecraft, fitted with cockpits thjat have clearly been ripped out and replaced. When one sits inside, fragments of VR menus flicker, dangling from the canopy... Like a player cockpit was ripped out and replaced. That'll at least make sure everyone involved flies under the radar -- literally. Whether they choose vehicles, maneuvering gear, or anything else, it's all found in what looks like a fully-carved-out hangar stolen from the side of a space station... one that was active until recently. If one takes off from there, or logs in via VR, it won't be hard to fly over to the transmitter station. PLAYER FORCES transponders bypass defenses, and let them glide into the hangar, where they can customize their ship, make exchanges -- and see the early-middle-age man walking the glass-paned central chamber, even connect via fancy holo-telepresence (presumably to limit the actual collision and physics simulation in-game). He paces tensely on his idle loop, adjusting his airforce-or-maybe-navy-looking uniform and frowning constantly. There's a briefing for a major game-event going on. Sterile Squadron is out in force, at least two-dozen high-ranked fighters in the hangar, plus a scattering of bombers, an SWACS tactics player, two or three cyberwarfare "casters", and someone in a gimmick build that uses mining equipment and robotic arms to physically fight -- they should be good inspiration for people to set up their own builds, but they don't represent the full breadth of the system. Settle in. Join the holo-"teleconference" if you want, or just take it all via radio. A countdown for the big event is running on a huge screen above the hangar door, giant ominous red numbers ticking down...
KNK	Rose and Violet arrive early and in person, though they won't be immediately obvious to anyone else who did, since Violet is sneaking invisibly among abandoned craft and Rose is hanging back to scan for active electronics. Between the two, they do a thorough sweep, and tear out a few things that were merely slightly suspicious, replacing hardware with their own devices to make a couple of usable craft. They don't need too much in the way of controls -- just comfortable seating and access points that wire directly into Violet's wrists and Rose's neck, through what look like subdermal jacks. One time Rose was sure she needn't have bothered, she ended up having a motorcycle brake due to an OTA update and suddenly activated DRM. Twice burned, thrice shy, et cetera. They're both -- though mostly Rose -- more practiced at the field stripping and refitting, by now. The IFF is, of course, left untouched. That'd be like messing with your invitation. Full customization isn't something to be bothered with until they reach the hangar, where Rose sets about finding the longest range precision and homing weapons available to be a maximum-range attack with a secondary in cyberwarfare and spotting, while Violet fine-tunes her thrust profile for maximum maneuverability, definitely beyond what should be reasonably possible for a trained astronaut to handle, along with close-range burst damage, the kind of thing only a thrill junkie, not a soldier, would seriously consider. And yet, they're not here in VR. The two ninjas -- who could not be seen as anything but ninjas, in the flesh*, are physically present. Violet's even smiling and trying to find people to chat up about absolutely anything they're willing to talk about.
Metamorph One	"--issue is, with the Von Neumann type NPCs, and the kind of AI they were using in that generation of games trying to riff off the Cyber Core--" "Sorry, um, the in-game AI right?" "Yeah." "Like, the enemy programming, and not--?" "Yeah, yeah, not an AI running the game. The normal kind." "But they were tapping the Cyber Core emergence for . . . processing speed?" "Well, kind of; it's more about an install base type of-- look I'll just explain ship customization first and then we can get to the sequel." "Oh, okay!" Thus goes the ongoing conversation between Dianna and Elara of why the former isn't just logging the both in with her game account, after all the hours she spent on the first game. It's something that's clearly kept the pair of them occupied for long enough to get together their day trip effects, tell Angkasa where they're going, launch the Metamorph from regular field calibration, and make the whole trip over here, without moving much further past the topic of the hideous, unbelievable flaws of the emusphere VR system and its relation to the corpselike fingrs of capital. Dianna is in the midst of so animatedly explaining something about a major server closing event that she seems almost put out by arriving. "Sec. That countdown. Do you think . . . ?" "We're already spaceworthy, so lemme just see what the player widgets look like in a stock model and I'll get the AR-O implemented on our HUD feed, 'kay?" "Nice. So basically-- you remember what I told you about the collision physics problems, right?" "Oh do I!"
Audrey Basque	EARLIER Audrey, sitting at the table in her room, eating the world's most bland salad that she did the exact same way and still can't get it to taste right, idly answers texts from her friends. You keep deflecting. Are you or are you not busy tonight? Yes, I am busy tonight. concord stuff? no no wait let me try again a third suitor! Sylvie!!! Oh my, but maybe the first two were the same, you know? Maria!!!!! Darling, we are joking. yeah chill but like you could tell us, you know? We would listen~ There is nothing to tell. I have to finish a presentation on a star chart from another world. It is just that. It has stars missing, you understand, the implications are immense. huh-uh Well, have fun, Stargazer~ I will. Putting the phone down, she idly glances towards the other end of the table, where the star charts of Elibe lie along with her pile of notes. The fact is, she'd finished a hour ago. With no actual plans for the evening, and no desire to hang out... but she couldn't just stay cooped up doing nothing, either. How convenient when a message makes her phone buzz again, and it's not from the group chat, or anyone she knows even. "Horologium... yeah, six stars... huh." She does a quick search. Bladecraft Connect. Not one she plays, but she does have the gear. "Some kind of promotional campaign?" What could it hurt to check it out? And it's for Angela, too. NOW When Audrey plays games, she prefers to not look like herself. There's a lot of reasons, but the main one is she wouldn't want her friends to find out she has a gamer side. But now she's being asked to accompany her by Angela, so... she'll have to compromise. When Audrey arrives at the transmission station, via VR, she's wearing a full-body cool techno-type bodysuit (in blacks and greys), along with most of a helmet; it's one of those open helmet designs that covers the lower half of the head, tough the mouth and nose are covered by a tinted glass-like mask and the eyes by a slightly less tinted visor. There's cat ears on her head, part of the helmet, and her long brown hair is pulled back into two large tails behind her head, though her bangs still hide her forehead completely. It's something along these lines. Her ship is customized defensively; another MMO would consider her to have picked a 'tank class' type archetype, heavily focused on DEFENSE, AREA DENIAL, and carefully timed FINISHERS. Now she just has to wait for Angela...
Petra Soroka	Petra remembers Bladecraft Connect, and, for her, it was pretty much wholly positive. At least at the time, it was kind of the high point of her life, because it was an opportunity to not be Petra Soroka, and that was the most she could ask for back then. On the other hand, though-- it'd be really embarrassing to get trapped in a VR video game. She has a job! She can't afford something like that happening. So, she is not going to put another fucking headset on, nosiree. She could be convinced, in another scenario, to do something that might trap her in a VR video game indefinitely, but only with a guarantee that Lilian would also be there; because imagining the disappointment on Lilian's face when she wonders what Petra has been up to since the war because she hasn't heard from her-- and even that's kind of overly hopeful already-- and then being told that Petra's stuck in some STUPID fucking portal isekai bullshit that's totally unrelated to anything helpful-- it sucks! Petra has to not get stuck in a video game! And the Beauty of Ash is a vehicle that exists in space naturally without any assistance or retrofitting. The ethereally translucent iridescent hardlight of the mech is entirely at-odds with the military corpo space-fighter aesthetic of the rest of the setting, but despite Petra's attachment to being a gritty and grim space fighter pilot, she's also spent far too long not piloting the Beauty of Ash to choose to not pilot it now. On the way to the hangar, the humanoid-ish mech alternates between lazy loping and oceanic spiraling to drift through space, soundless and inertialess with telekinetic propulsion rather than combustion fueling it. It lands in the hangar on four needle-sharp legs, scraping to a halt with the sound of nails on metal. The one thing Petra does need to pick up before arrival isn't anything for her vehicle, but for the figure that hops out of its arched back in a splash of glittering glass shards and drops to the ground. The Beauty of Ash might not fit the aesthetic-- but Petra must, so she grabbed one of those slutty jumpsuits and a bulky pilot jacket to go on over it. It's practical. They're designed like that for a reason! If there's space combat then what if someone captures the Beauty of Ash in a tractor beam and she's stuck and they pull her closer and see through the glass cockpit and if she's not wearing a slutty jumpsuit they might think she's not that kind of mech pilot!! Her specialization, self-evidently, without any alteration, is god's own Light // Flash ramming build. HP can be directly converted into damage if you regenerate it fast enough!
Angela	This is the story of an AI who wanted to become... Librarian. But all told, Angela is ont someone who knows how to pilot a spacecraft in real life, nor has she ever--in fact--so much as seen a spacecraft unless you count the Beauty of Ash. She has designed a Black fighter with a purple cockpit shield and she just kind of spends the time she has to get ready checking through the systems on her spacecraft, going through all the menus, and trying to figure out how to actually operate the thing. And there's a strange ache in her chest as she's up there amongst the stars--even virtual stars. She clenches her purple spacesuit with her hand and clenches the cloth slightly. Ever since that time gazing up at the stars with Audrey she can't stop thinking about them. Is each one of those a world? Can they grant wishes if she were to visit one like the myths? She takes the time to calm herself before performing a systems check. Seems like life support is working, ion thrusters are working, and it's main weapon is functional though there seem to be some locked systems. Progression based, she wonders. She supposes if the followup occurs before she can depart on her own two feet she'll figure smething out then. As she glides in, the ache has faded in as she has learned to stop fretting and learn to enjoy the experience. She is given some customization options and she tinkers around a bit between subweapons. She's a little unclear what some of these are but she makes some additional modifications there, though hse keeps the color scheme. She also remembers Bladecraft Connect. It was the time Lilian said she looked better with long hair. Also, she got to feel grass under her feet for the first time, even if it was completely virtual. And Netzach was there. She's going to have to bring back Netzach, isn't she? Angelapops open her cockpit shield, nearly accidentally firing inside the hangar when she almost pushes the wrong button. "Spaceflight is easy. I wonder why not everybody is doing it." Angela says as she pops open the cockpit shield. She takes a look around and... "Ah...Petra! I did not know the Beauty of Ash was in this game." She then turns around, lookinjg for Audrey. There's a catgirl over there apparently. Angela frowns faintly. Where is Audrey? "Perhaps she could not make it.." Angela murmurs.
Distortion Dets.	"Detective? There's some really weird stuff coming through the radio line! I'm writing what I can down, because it sure seems like it's something, but..." "But what, Ezra? Go on." "Well, some of it's not making any sense, I can't make it out clearly to write down! And, and! Interesting people are piping up about it? I think we should look into it, at least, because others are too." "Mm. How do you propose that we do?" "Well, good news and bad news! Want the good stuff first?" "I suppose. What's the good news?" "They're explaining all we gotta do to get in touch and involved! Directions to get there, unless we can find some sort of correct computer device... Pretty comprehensive, Detective!" "I see. That's quite convenient. So. What was the bad news?" "Eheh, welllllllll, we sort of only have one hour to get there~!" "Ah." . . . With the strict controls District 14 of the City imposes on recorded media and media access, a limited timeframe is just not feasible for procuring complex Outsider VR devices- which means the Fixers of Moses' Office are forced to attend 'on foot'. This means nervous bus trips (and giving up to call a taxi for the shaved-off minutes), customs and security lines, and Moses and Ezra frantically rushing through warp hubs to find entry points to the specific section of the Soft Expanse. "Uwah, Detective! This has got to be the place! Just look at all of those contraptions!" "I see them, Ezra. Flying machines? I can't say I like how haphazard their construction is." "Well! I think they're cute, Detective! See that one, with the plating stripped off those... turbines? It's like it's big and tough, and been through a lot!" "Mm. And you propose we just take one? And do what with it?" "Fly it! It can't be that hard! Others are grabbing others up, and I triple-checked there's no way to just walk to the coordinates!" "I see." Detective Moses, grumpy older woman and chainsmoker, finds herself getting metaphorically dragged across the floor of the sketchy hangar by her cheery assistant, much the same as a tired child dragged out shopping. Ezra hums the whole time, excited-looking, and waves at the other foot-traffic attendants, as she goes about figuring how on earth one is meant to get into the cockpit of the shoddy old spaceship she's calling dibs on. After the requisite fuss, Moses and Ezra both pile into the same ship- a clunky old bomber setup, big and heavy from the weapons and a whole suite of interference systems. With more than enough workload for two to manage, Moses and Ezra are quite naturally split into the classic pilot-gunner duo format. Neither particularly expect the vehicle to even start up- but it does, and the gameified systems (albeit in person) facilitate actually being able to pilot it over to their destination.
Petra Soroka	Petra sits on top of the Beauty of Ash's back while it settles in the hangar on all fours, loafing like a cat. The call on the radio was for 'help', which recontextualizes the big red countdown slightly. The briefing can help a little, but Petra wouldn't really be invested if this is just some big video game release, and so the trappings of the video game are inherently somewhat untrustworthy. Idle-loop man, by that definition, is unremarkable, and so she turns to the pilot beside her for information. Who happens to coincidentally be Audrey, because she doesn't recognize her at all. "Yo. Are you part of Sterile Squadron? What do you know about Cavern Squadron?" Elsewhere, in the LOADING LOBBY: "Ah...Petra! I did not know the Beauty of Ash was in this game." "Oh! Ange!" Angela being here physically, ish, is worth sliding off of the Beauty of Ash to go give her a hug. Petra turns to look at the mech where it's squatted, fidgeting with the retractable visor of her jumpsuit a bit. "Oh. Well, it is now. I figured I'd want as many options if this turned out like-- like any other, numerous and nonspecific, VR video game incidents where people playing them get stuck inside." Dianna and Elara are also here! Petra has interacted with Elara only briefly since joining the Concord, and Dianna none at all since the last miserable day she stepped on Io. So she's a little shy about it. She glances in their directions whenever she can't resist not doing so, but she has no idea what she'd say, so she says nothing at the moment.
Angela	"The Detective is here..." Angela returns the hug, smiling briefly despite the dire circumstances she's in, but she's decidedly murmuring that statement. "We must be constantly on our guard or The Detective will pry truths out of us we can't afford to share." Angela murmurs. She doesn't even use Moses at this point, just The Detective. "I'll do my best to be careful but stop me if I get lured into their questioning..." ''Ezra! Turn those alarms off. There's no cockpit fire.'' "Though they may be too distracted to properly investigate..." She exhales a sigh of cautious relief. "I'm glad. I think I like space travel. And I am glad to see the Beauty of Ash again." Fond memories well up in her positronic heart. Petra introducing the mech to everyone where she got to spend time with Heyalexa too, seeing photographs of it playing with Fae, Petra using it to rip Shajo in half... Fond memories. "It could be worse than getting stuck inside here, but I will not settle for virtual stars now that I've seen the real thing." Angela adds. Should she tell Petra that Audrey is the catgirl? Well she already knows since Audreyt just told her. But should she point it out? Hmm. "Perhaps we can fly together to do .... .... I am actually not clear on what we are here to do, but we could do it together." She says.
Audrey Basque	Audrey has taken more than a moment to look around at all the different models; she doesn't play VR games often these days! Despite having an expensive rig no one is allowed to know about... she might have gotten a bit distracted, in fact, looking around the station's hangar, at all the different ships and suits and-- Angela is looking for her. She's about to find her after identifying herself but then gets ambushed by PETRA, who makes her heart sink in her chest. That-- she'd responded, it makes sense. And the Beauty of Ash is... still pretty despite... Does she open her mouth? Deep breath. Audrey's posture weakens, wrapping an arm around herself securely. "H-Hi Petra." Well, this up close, with her voice unchanged, and the looks-- close enough, there's no point hiding it. It'd be weirder if she hid it, really. She follows to Angela, and the mention of 'flying together' makes her perk a brow with a visible question mark above her head. "I'm... not sure. But the way the message was phrased it kind of seemed like there would be a limited time event or launch event or... whatever it is, it shouldn't be too long." Just focus on the game. It's a game, right? Despite some people just... walking in?
Redshift Operators	"Alright, fellas, this one's a big one." The man in the middle of the hangar has a tone was like someone discussing a recital to their child. "We're pretty sure an Enemy Force capital ship's gonna be coming out of FTL right around here, and headed dead-heat towards our fine little transmitter. Just ruthless kind of rush if you're asking me, with plenty of escorts, fighters, drones, bombers, the whole kit and cargo. Well, long as my guesses about the intel are right." Folks are invited to the holocalls, but those who don't, just get video feeds. Anyone joining in is given plenty of opportunities to send in their input, through a set of dialogue options, map interfaces, and the like. Tactical approaches, designations for their own positions, and other suchlike make this a sort of build-your-own-raid system. Sterile 2, whose holoprojection/video-feed both display a pilot's jumpsuit in a tense posture and a wide-canopied set of goggles on her pilot's helmet, just sent one in, from the look of it -- an unconventional strategy that involves melting down the reactor of the station and blowing it up to EMP-blast the facility. You can see her tapping dialogue options. "Advice for you, Lieutenant. Code - Symphony, Sterilize, Erythema." "Hey there, Sterile 2, looks like your strategy calls this one a draw. Savvier than a Company EULA on Black Friday, but if you don't mind, we can't be doing that. Today, this station's max-priority." The Lieutenant is keeping his language to broad strokes. Conserving voicelines! "Confirmed. Code - Artery, Sword, Night." She designates herself pointman on a squad of her own high-ranking competitive fighters, and the others confirm, and that's that. She's not standoffish with the newbies or with those folks with just-slightly-unusual usernames, but she's sort of... not treating them with encouragement you'd expect?
Redshift Operators	She's more willing to just.. converse, oddly. When Rose and Violet speak to her, she winds up taking them on a long discussion of both some broad philosophical topics on her mind (the utopian fairness of videogames which she's debating with a friend, recent patches to the game, the history of the military-industrial complex and its relationship with games like this, the tendencies in newbies around the time big expansions like this get released, and so on). She doesn't say much about where she's from, but she does mention a few local political things about her town and the particular instance of Cavemouth Arcades that she likes visiting. Obviously, the Lieutenant doesn't chime in. Few of her fellow gamers seem interested, too. In the VR-holocall view, one can literally see them checking social media on other tabs while they wait. Moses can see something unusual about Sterile 2: In the holocall, or shining brightly through the opaque canopy of her spaceship, her head is completely replaced with a lantern burning so bright one can hardly stand to look at it, planted in front of the mouth of a cave that leads out to colors so vivid that one could hardly stand to look away. She alone among Sterile Squadron has this, and that fire burns with unspeakable intensity. Co-op builds are easy. Mecha are tougher, but workable, assuming one doesn't try to get both humanoid arms and humanoid legs. The builds in general, here, are clearly within grasp. Either Horologium has furnished them with enough materials, or the progression is mostly in territory, or maybe a little of both. Either way, skill is the limiting factor. As for those with experience in IFO1? Not hard to transfer those skills over, speaking of them. Though, while IFO1 took place in a single solar system, this one crosses many, and that makes for some interesting gameplay changes. Good thing, though, that the Neurovores and other similar threats aren't here. When Angela, Audrey, and Petra interact, there's a brief <INSTANCE LOADING> flicker on everyone's ends and rendering distances cut weirdly. It mostly works, but it's clear that something about this hates physical interaction beyond spaceship interiors, and it's only some finessing from Horologium that allows it. From the outside it briefly looks like someone's physics object jittered around -- listen to that classic gmod-jostle.mp3!
Petra Soroka	"We must be constantly on our guard or The Detective will pry truths out of us we can't afford to share." "Well," Petra keeps her voice similarly low for Angela, "Right now, you're a pilot, in a game. You don't need to give anyone your life story-- it's actually a really bad habit Elites have of doing that, even when it doesn't matter to the mission. So, don't worry, yeah. I'll be keeping an eye out." ".... I am actually not clear on what we are here to do, but we could do it together." "I, um... don't really think we could fit in the Beauty of Ash together. It wouldn't-- well, we could, but it wouldn't be comfortable. And it's not like there's much for you to do in there." Petra turns to the Beauty of Ash, with fewer feathers remaining from the last time the Light was channeled through it, indicating some sort of sense of 'overflow' and 'receding influence' that heals over time. It also, as Angela can see, does not have a cockpit at all like the game vehicle she's been given. "Anyways-- I'm not really here to do some video game stuff. I'm expecting something to go wrong." "H-Hi Petra." Petra is confronted by SOMEONE SHE DOESN'T KNOW greeting her by name!! She stares at Audrey blankly for several more seconds. Evidently, the small changes to her appearance are enough to completely throw Petra off identifying her on sight, but when Audrey continues over to interact with Angela, Petra suddenly manages to place her voice. "A-ah-- Audrey, you..." 'Definitely dressed yourself up for this', is not something that Petra can say right now, in the specific situation she and Audrey are in. So instead, Petra awkwardly shuffles back over to the Beauty of Ash. "W-well, you know... timer's getting, low. Yup."
Angela	''don't really think we could fit in the Beauty of Ash together'' "I mean fly within reasonable proximity of one another, not all taking the same ship." Angela clarifies, looking back over to the Beauty of Ash. There are fewer feathers--natural healing, she wonders, or... ''I'm expecting something to go wrong.'' Angela frowns. "Mm... Seems plausible, but if a VR connection no longer proves sufficient I will find someone else to send in my place." ''H-Hi Petra.'' ''A-ah-- Audrey, you...'' "I am glad you are both here." Angela says. "If something ''does'' go wrong, we'll surely be able to handle it." The timer IS getting low so maybe she should pay attention to the exposition since knowing what's supposed to happen will help inform when something doesn't happen. ''INSTANCE LOADING'' "Ah, is that it?" Angela asks Petra. "Is that the something wrong? ... Or is that normal?" She does pull back a little bit to avoid antagonizing the system any further than she accidentally has. She knows nothing about space fighting or fighting or war in general and so doesn't really offer any tactical solutions right now. That sounds like an opportunity to mess up and so she just won't do it.
Audrey Basque	"Y-Yeah," Audrey responds to Petra, and Angela by the same token, awkwardly. At least Angela was right, they should be OK. It's also quite noticeable the game doesn't seem to like people doing a lot outside their ships. Guess it just wasn't planned with that kind of social feature in mind. Holoscreens are cool, so it could be excused but... you can't give players this much fashion choice and then lock them in their cockpit all the time, come on! "Um. I guess it's starting. Good luck," Audrey manages, scratching the back of her head. She reaches for the side of her helmet, adjusting the tinting on the front parts of the helmet to be a bit thicker. No one needs to see her frowning. Not here. And yet, what Petra said is in the back of her mind now-- that she expects something to go wrong. Does everything just go wrong here, all the time? Can't it just be a game, for once? She pulls up an interface, to look at the briefing; the suggested plan to cause a meltdown and 'win' that way. That's... setting the bar for success kind of low, isn't it? Or maybe it's some kind of meta players have figured out already. Then again, they're mostly rejecting it. "H-Hey, Angela, I'm going to head into my ship before the game glitches out from us talking like this, okay? We can talk over that." And she does! She joins the holocall, quite happy that since her character model is mostly masked-ish, it's a good look over mugshot cams. With a finger flick on the interface, she positions her ship, THE QUASAR, which no doubt doubles as her in-game callsign, up front on the raid planning interface. It's bold, but she might as well test how the game deals with tank builds. "Sterile 2, if I might propose a change to your plan. I have a mostly defensive build. I can attract as many of their attention as I can so you can all pincer."
KNK	Once Violet has gotten in touch with Sterile-2, she ropes Rose into the conversation. They turn out to have pretty different opinions on what constitutes fun, though with the level of long relationship where they're unable to shock each other, so Rose can talk about deterministic planning games where the only 'random' factors are unknown enemy compositions and fog of war, and Violet can talk about how dressing up in gacha-won swimwear gives her a cheaper but similar dopamine hit to offline shopping, and the disagreement never goes beyond the level of playful fussing -- though it's a lot harder to tell with Rose, thanks to her resting sharpness levels. And yet, they seem to be perfectly in sync for games like this. Set, complementary roles, and Rose is asking Bonfire if her squad of veterans could use extra spotting just as a matter of clear communication and planning, while Violet is asking about taking point versus hanging back for an ambush. Topics can mix freely, as far as they're concerned, between the impending violence of uncertain realness to the fun of going to an arcade -- which both KNK members consider in varying levels of fondness. Their own City still has those, apparently. As to builds, both have gone for full fightercraft, no mecha, with a lot of curved roundness in the designs, forward-swept wings in multiple pairs, extending, in Violet's case, for the specific purpose of letting her spin that much faster. Top speed is a secondary concern, but still high enough. She's also gone and painted it garish combinations of purple and green, while Rose's sniping platform and missile array is asteroid-gray.
Distortion Dets.	Moses and Ezra get situated in a dual-seater format standard bomber-craft, a large bubble canopy above them, the body of the ship around it on the sides. Within it, neither have the theme-appropriate flight dress, but they've gotten situated at controls and radios, and Moses is doing the worst thing one can on a spacecraft: smoking tobacco. For strategy, the two of them attend the holoconference, but have little to add. They sign on with their ship's role as a bomber, in need of escort, but offering support and impact should they get it. Moses has her notepad out, though, hastily recording things about other attendents- she's here for that far more than the fighting. Ezra couldn't care less about anything but the game. >an unconventional strategy that involves melting down the reactor >shining brightly through the opaque canopy of her spaceship, Moses stares across the hangar at Sterile 2's cockpit, eyes narrowed. "Ezra. Look to your left, and across. Do you see anything strange?" "Ehh? Where? There's vehicles, vehicles, some more vehicles..." Mm. I see." Moses looks down at the controls in front of her, and fiddles with what seems to be a radio channel-switcher. "Sterile-2, do you read? New, ahh,, 'player', here," she says, with a bit of revulsion in her voice, "And I wanted to ask something in regards to the strategy you proposed? A power meltdown..? What was your reasoning? This is, ah, outside the bounds of what I'm familiar with, if you elaborate on the thought processes, that would be helpful to me." Moses clicks her transmission off. She leans back against her chair, in the pilot's seat. Indicating which one with her pipe, "For what it's worth, Ezra, I see light coming from that pilot, in that one over there. Burning, searing light, like a lantern's, and she suggests to melt and overload something..? I don't know what she aims for, Ezra, but she's acting in the same direction as her Distortion." "Gotcha, Detective? So, what, you want to pay attention to her? Cool, cool. I'll keep an eye out when you can't! Though, maybe I'll lose track of what flier is what... ehe..." <J-IC-Scene> Sterile 2 "Bonfire" says, "Put a name on your ship though. The default ones are dumb as hell." Moses sighs. "All yours, Ezra." "Ehhhn, but that's such a tough decision! Are you sure? Okay~! Then-" She clicks on her own transmitter. <J-IC-Scene> Distortion Dets. \| Ezra pipes in, "Our ship's the Anvil! It kind of looks like that, all front-heavy, and bits of it keep going 'clang' like hitting one with a hammer! The Detective's callsign, well, she's obviously Detective, and I'm..." A pause. "Ezra's fine."
Petra Soroka	Oh! The video game hates this! Petra hastily clambers up onto the back of the Beauty of Ash and slips through into the cockpit again. She sits, arms wrapped around her knees, with the holoconference refracting a thousandfold through the interior factes of the Beauty of Ash's chest, making the entire mech glow from inside and seem to squirm and breathe with the motions of telecommunicated social interaction. After having had a streak of being decently capable of tactics-planning in real life, Petra is made more acutely aware of her limitations in doing so in an environment where she's less familiar with the details. Lobotomy Corporation and the City is one thing, Elibe is another thing, and this... a video game she doesn't play, with some mysterious external threat that she doesn't understand, fighting on a side she can't identify versus an enemy she can't name, is as out of her element as she can be. Frankly, she's also primarily familiar with space combat in the context of 'play', which is... it is a video game... but the play-combat is meant to emulate combat more than play. "Sterile 2, I'm good to rely on you here-- I'm fast and nimble, but I've got basically no ranged options, and I'm better at penetrating to softer targets than doing damage to hard ones. Do you have any suggestions where I could be useful?" Petra is having fun with this, a little bit. She's sort of lost, and she's expecting something to go catastrophically wrong, but in the end, it is a game, and the trappings of a game are meant to encourage fun. She's also not a stranger to military tactics games like this-- not in VR, and not IFO1 either, but it does still light the same neural pathways up. This makes her feel absolutely certain that she needs to have a callsign, but with Elara here, her terrible embarrassing past mistake threatens to rear up and haunt her, so she needs to come up with one and declare it. But what kinds of monikers does Petra have? She can't just pull one out of the aether-- that results in 'Afterglow', which she really can't believe that she didn't notice the euphemism until after saying it for the first time. AU-30-Petra was such a loser fucking virgin idiot!!! Petra can do better now! But only through the lens of things other people have called her! So, things Petra has been called: Slut-- that's a no-go from the start. No way. Tourist-- why is everything that comes to mind an insult?? Egghead-- suitable, unfortunately, but it's still not inspiring. It'd make Eggman really happy to know that she used it for something else, but that can't be it. Then... "... Callsign... Cyborg, I guess." Callsigns have to be a little humiliating, but at least for this one, no one but Petra knows why. Then, Petra also shuffles around in the cockpit of the Beauty of Ash, which means folding her legs butterfly-style in front of her and leaning forwards to poke at the holodisplay. "So, uh, Bonfire. Does the name 'Horologium' mean anything to you? I saw it come up, but I'm new, so...."
Metamorph One	For a little while, Elara spends the intervening prep time crouched over menu catalogues of in-game player CPUs and tracking systems, studying the game's target detection and radar, and, contrasting Dianna, working up a sweat installing a number of microchip-grade components into the console bank accompanying the machine's operator-type co-pilot chair. Though at a casual glance, Dianna looks like she should be the one with her sleeves rolled up (well, she isn't wearing any), cheeks stained with grease, twisting something with a wrench, she seems fully content to simply hold Elara's cute little hat while she works on her back under the computers, and rattle off halfway-interesting facts about the game's presumed development cycle in a way that finally reveals itself as walking about around to 'theorizing on what literally any of this means' between bursts of reminiscence. tMidway through entering the pair's own well-worn and stuffed-animal-familiar callsigns as paperwork, reviewing their current loadout from the pilot's seat as a kind of highly technical multirole artillery, Dianna has ample opportunity to stare at Petra for daring to show her face. Rather than commenting on the blob of women she's brought around, Dianna seems almost wholly fixated on the Beauty of Ash, overwhelmingly projecting an uncomfortable sense of impatient ambivalence. "So which one is it?" she interjects, while Elara is busy, touchpad clipboard loosely accessorizing her folded arms. "Are you two playing, or are you already back to your old ways? Don't try to lie to me either; I'll see right through it." She doesn't ask about Audrey. Her gaze is entirely, uncomfortably on Petra's mech. Elara pops up like a little blonde periscope to motion for her partner, with a dragged out "Di~! I need to confirm all this with your player account! You don't mind splitting a few hyperdimensional space gems or whatever, right? It's like a date cost~" before appearing to notice. "Huh? Not 'Afterglow'? Are you roleplaying or something? You're going to end up with a kind of sleazy persona if you try." Elara loses interest before Dianna does (or, feigns it; hard to tell) and waves down Violet as soon as mutual recognition is established, and pesters her to see if Rose feels like getting in on 'pools' and acting like they're now obligated to compete a little as if this were all an impromptu double date at the same arcade. Dianna is the one who eventually diverts to paying attention to Sterile's game plan, absorbing it with the energy of a curious exchange student who knows they're not going to be tested on this and that it can't affect their grade in any way. She takes only a short while to make up her mind about distributing direct ping permissions amongst select squaddies and indicating her made-up-on-the-spot system of which 'ping' means what, essentially offering immediate fire support with a truly ridiculous breadth of ammo types and a certain well-earned confidence in assuming she can find an angle at any given time.
Petra Soroka	"Are you two playing, or are you already back to your old ways?" Petra winces at being addressed. Thank god that question is being directed by Dianna towards her and the Beauty of Ash, rather than Elara prodding her about Audrey more. She's a lot more resolved on one of those emotional paths than the other, even though it's still breathtakingly close to her heart. "A-ah... it's a game, isn't it?" Petra sighs, and the Beauty of Ash crackles down its length from the base of its 'neck', shaking itself out like a dog. "Sorry. Believe me, I'm-- not really planning on getting into any serious trouble. I've kind of got my plate full enough already." "Not 'Afterglow'? Are you roleplaying or something?" "No!!! No! Anything but that!" Petra curses the Petra of years past, for many reasons, but in this instant, particularly for saying that callsign to the only people who would actually ever bring it up again rather than just forgetting about it. She went so long not thinking about it at all! Why does it come back to haunt her now?! "I-I-- I mean, that--" Stammering and being flustered is the kind of reaction that guarantees that everyone will remember a nickname forever, so Petra has to come up with another option, and it's one that convinces her right when she says it. "Well... that was a different machine, right?" "'Sleazy persona', though...." Petra mumbles, and droops down, color-smear through the mech's chest hanging her head. Is she really that sleazy? Is everyone right to think so?
KNK	Elara.. waves down Violet... and pesters her... Violet is so easy to pester. Her being begs to be bothered and bothers in turn. "You know, I kept thinking, what if me and Rose did that kind of two-seater thing, but I think it wouldn't really work for us, since I need to be 'out there' and she needs to be 'back there,' you know? She can't see where I am if we're in the same place, and I can't see where I am unless I slow down. And then nobody'd be keeping an eye on me! Someone has to, but I'd like to be too busy for that. Oh! I'll get Rose, okay! She'd probably go for it, you know how -- or don't you? Anyway--!" Some things she says might be insane, but it's easier to get away with anything if you don't stop moving. "Sure, why not," is the thrust of Rose's feelings about betting pools. She's even willing to put down what's effectively 'a cheap meal' money on half a dozen specific battle metrics that sound more like sports betting when put all together. She spends part of the time talking taking really careful looks at all of the long-ranged weaponry on the Metamorph.
Redshift Operators	A few screenshot-taking drones drift near the Beauty of Ash. If she looks at Reddit on r/IFO2, she can see a few screencaps of her get a few upvotes, but not, like, a TON. Angela's experiment with the instancing reveals that it seems to be entirely a second-layer networking thing. In-game, she never opened the canopy -- something Horologium sideloaded has facilitated sub-instancing. Looks like this game isn't complex enough to handle personal interactions like that usually. "Sterile 2, if I might propose a change to your plan. I have a mostly defensive build. I can attract as many of their attention as I can so you can all pincer." "Confirmed, Solo Wing Quasar. Looks like a decent build. Screen incoming missiles and bog down any Cavern elites and I'll pincer if you can manage it." Bonfire rambles. She doesn't admit Audrey to her specific group, but she's not, you know, unwilling to work together. She's just... guarded, in a way. She seems quite fine with Rose and Violet as well. "Duo wing, we'll take any data you have that's good, sure. Tac-net's up, hop on. If you wanna go far ahead, just don't splash early, our respawn tickets are fucked on this event mode." "A power meltdown..? What was your reasoning? This is, ah, outside the bounds of what I'm familiar with, if you elaborate on the thought processes, that would be helpful to me." "A lot of the terrain stuff in this game has weirder interactions. It's mostly for engineer gameplay but we get some too. A transmission station overload can turn into an EMP, that kind of stuff. I think a clever tricky win is pretty much as good as a stand-up fight. Capships are tough, and Cavern Squadron is actually on the Big List." If asked about what that means, she just says, "No confirmed splashes, lots of showing up at events. Game puts a bounty on them, so blowing up the station to get it is good trading." "I'm fast and nimble, but I've got basically no ranged options, and I'm better at penetrating to softer targets than doing damage to hard ones. Do you have any suggestions where I could be useful?" "I have no idea how you got your build so fucked, Cyborg." She says, frankly. "Climb on the capship and just start punching turrets. Crumple a torpedo tube if you can or whatever. If you die you die, it'll look really cool if you pull it off, and it could actually make your build work if you actually know how to move fast in that." Her big shrug is only visible in the holocall, but the sheepish acceptance comes through. ...Essentially offering immediate fire support with a truly ridiculous breadth of ammo types... "Artillery gaming." She mutters, with a grin in her tone. "Yeah, Sterile 1's gonna love that, I'll let them know. Hook up with the SWACS and you two will do great. I think dudes have a need to order certain things on certain grids, for enrichment or something." An ambient atmosphere of bland gamer misogyny also creates several small incidents not worth immediate note. Petra, for example, should acquire at least one essential nutrient from someone who is otherwise totally silent sending her a friend request and an invite to a Dissonance server where someone has invented and eagerly started espousing Eugenics 2 in #politics. The timer hits zero. Launches begin.
Redshift Operators	---------------------------------------- \| /!\CAUTION/!\ \| \| GRADE [MIDNIGHT] ENEMY STRIKE FORCE \| \| --- \| \| ASV "SILHOUETTE" \| \| "CAVERN" SQUADRON" \| \| UNKNOWN SIGNATURE RESOLVING... \| ---------------------------------------- An FTL outlet just outside the facility is disgorging a vanguard of drones just ahead of the ASV Silhouette, a high-bounty, highly agile cruiser. Both emit warbling static and huge amounts of laser fire, missiles, and solid slugs to carve a gap for Cavern Squad, a trio of heavy fighters with multiple hull bars marked with a skull for their difficulty. Objectives that pop up on HUDs are far more concerned with holding them off of certain control points than they are concerned with defeating the foes. It would seem there's little confidence that someone would win this one, but plenty of prizes for hardening up the defenses to certain numbers of minutes. If those heavy fighters have anything to say about it, though, those minutes will be seconds; Cavern 3 unleashes expert missile spreads and always seems to have a target lock, dominating cyberwarfare against the players ruthlessly, while Cavern 2 has a railgun that's nearly an instant-kill and a hull that seems to have resistances on every damage type. Cavern 1... is frankly unfair. The reaction time is just nothing. They didn't even bother to code in a human-like delay or something. But, fight for each minute of survival. Every moment you live, every moment you keep those control points, every moment you maintain the station's defenses, resources for the small victory roll in.
Redshift Operators	Moses, and Moses alone, can see flickers of something from Cavern 1. Stage pulleys, curtains, spotlights...
Petra Soroka	> screenshot-taking drones With a gun pressed to her head, Petra's attack-sensing precognition would quicker react to prevent her from clicking on a Reddit thread than dodging the bullet. She doesn't mind having screenshots taken of the Beauty of Ash, though, because it is pretty, and that's how a video game works. In inspecting the drones, though, one of them catches a distorted lensed picture of the Beauty of Ash's single eye pressing up close to the drone's camera like an awkward close-up of a cat sniffing at a hidden camera. "I have no idea how you got your build so fucked, Cyborg." Petra huffs. "My build's perfect. No one does it like me, though, so it makes sense you haven't seen it." She fiddles with some of the tactical info on her map, getting annoyed that there's not actually a select option in the strategy display for 'fucking run straight at them and start attacking regardless of target and killing and writhing'. Everyone is playing this space fighting game wrong if 'personified bullet' isn't a valid option. "Right. Are there shield generators on the capital ship I could go after? Since I know I'll look cool as hell, I might as well cut out anything that'd distort your view of me." Maybe sleazy is not actually a bad descriptor for the way Petra is. 'Cocky' is cuter, though, she thinks. She is also afflicted with gamers. The fact that she specifically told the lobby that she is trying something bullshit insane, with the heedless confidence of insisting that they watch her, while also being a woman, intensifies this significantly, and so she has to solve a quicktime event for how to react to gamer misogyny. It's hard for it to bother her-- losers being losers towards her gives her several essential nutrients, not just one-- but that means it's all the more critical for Petra to choose the right response. She immediately accepts the Dissonance invite, and then pulls up a window to Google some of the established IFO characters. She tabs back into the server to type up a long-winded and preachy essay about how it's really good and forwards-thinking of IFO2's devs to have reduced the breast size of That One Character because it's about women's representation in gaming and everyone who complains is a gooner incel and probably racist too. Then she closes the tab and gets ready for launch. The Beauty of Ash is an alien presence in the battlefield, especially once it straightens upright to hover in the open vacuum. Off-genre, it responds to attacks more like a hummingbird than a machine, dodging in defiance of inertia and even in defiance of simple linear time, it weaves around as if it can react to each firing of Cavern 2's railgun. Diving into a cloud of drones, at first it looks like it's been annihilated by mere impact force, with an orbital shell of pearlescent broken glass gradually spreading off, but as it stalls in space for a moment, those shards swirl around and coalesce into an accretion disc, then whip away to shred through dozens more drones around.
Petra Soroka	<J-IC-Scene> Audrey Basque says, "The balance is totally off though. Those three bosses feel like a scripted loss fight. Kind of... makes you want to engage them more, doesn't it?" <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka snickers at something Audrey said, then says, "Well, race you." Adrenaline-fueled, it's slightly less pressing on Petra's mind that she's supposed to be awkward around Audrey. Now, it becomes very important that she show off, so rather than doing something as silly as 'defending a point', the Beauty of Ash alights on one of the drifting corpses of the drones with all four legs, then leaps off fast enough to be mistaken among the smaller lasers firing off all around. She aims herself, towards Cavern 1, rather than towards the capital ship, for the moment. When Cavern 1 moves to dodge, the angle of the Beauty of Ash's momentum pivots on a dime to keep up, without losing a fraction of its speed. The mech crashes into the fighter with an impact that pierces one of its daggerpoint legs through a wing, with the remaining momentum racking through the mech to rip hardlight fragments off of it and send them flying past Cavern 1 on the followthrough. The Beauty of Ash's snoutlike head rears up, and buries into Cavern 1, before all the talk of 'wait actually they're kind of talking to us' makes her hesitate enough to get bucked off.
Petra Soroka	It's so important to Petra to take a swing at Cavern Squadron. It's not what she promised doing, it's not where she's most useful, and it puts her at a notable disadvantage engaging with mechanics that she is definitionally less familiar with than her opponents, but she has to. Because if she doesn't prove that she can, then she'll never know! And all the gamers watching will never see that she totally can! Eventually, though, Petra has to disengage to her higher calling: attacking the biggest thing on the battlefield as one of the smallest, and doing it in a way that requires that everybody look at her because she'll be standing on the thing in their targeting reticles. When Petra's attention shifts, the Beauty of Ash drifts through space as if carried by air currents in the vacuum, and then it kicks off of nothing to rocket in the direction of the Silhouette. Rather than 'climbing and punching', as Bonfire put it, the Beauty of Ash streaks across the surface of the capital ship with its innate sharpness turning the body of the mech into a weapon. Turrets explode in its wake, and it veers to the side to dodge retaliatory missiles from the smaller drones guarding the ship. Far in the distance from where most of the other ships engaged in fighting the Silhouette are, the Beauty of Ash lands on the side of one of its torpedo tubes, and plunges an arm through the metal like a mosquito. A few seconds later, a circle around the puncture point explodes into a column of glass and metal shrapnel, with the glass shard cloud coiling around in space like a serpent before telekinetically heaving back into the Silhouette as a prolonged tide. Broken glass scratches more than it damages, but the flood of millions rapidly scrapes out gleaming metal underneath the exterior, and then deeper than that, until the tube crumples from the sheer weight of it all on the weakened metal.
KNK	Back in the ships, and launching. Violet stages her Sparkler out in front but to the side of the expected line of attack, attaching to asteroid and powering down almost all systems, waiting for the signal from Rose. Spared that first wave of attacks, they launch their ambush on Cavern 3, as the only major target neither armored nor ungodly quick. They get signals. Rose frowns a little harder, and starts running the recordings through some cleaning software. If it's distorted in any moderately consistent way, then... it's no guarantee she can do anything about it, but it doesn't hurt to try. Getting some voice actor speaking nonsense would still tell her something. "Bet that's not it, though." "Huh?" "Just thinking. I'll tell you if I find anything." "Okay!" "Violet, switch to that channel and start beaming something at them." "Like what?" "Doesn't matter. Natural speech and intonation. I just want to see if they respond to it." The ambush barely worked. It's more like it 'didn't' work, with the Sparkler's fragile construction losing one of its six wings in return fire. Violet punches -- mentally, since she's doing all her controls through wires ultimately connected to her brain interface -- a jettison charge, becoming a four-winged craft to regain her balanced profile, and juking in among the drones. She is, somehow, safer there than she is getting away entirely. Even by the barest hair's breadth, surrounded by enemies, the only thing that would have touched her suddenly explodes under Rose's railgun fire. She waits just long enough for Cavern Squadron to change their focus elsewhere, then blasts out toward Cavern 2. While Rose fires her full spread of missiles on dozens of drone locks as they were getting too close to both the Anvil and the defense point, Violet fires a custom round -- a magnet-clamped can with a transceiver. "Bonfire. The heavy specialization. That usual, or just these bounty targets?" "Seen big bounties and gimmicks on anything. Cargo ships. Miners-- Ghhh!" Shot-zipping-by-canopy sounds. "--Anything. Random crap. Procedural generation." "Usual, then. No standardization. Makes things tricky." Harder, but not impossible. "Tagged!" "Good job. Now, let's see if I can make 'em sweat." Cyberwarfare's usually a matter of prepared rounds. You don't build a gun and mill bullets mid-fight. But that's primarily true of people who are much, much slower than Rose is, when she takes a moment -- while dodging enemy fire that's approached her position -- to close her eyes, twitch a finger, then her neck, and let a cocktail of chemicals flood from the injectors in her collar up to her brain. The momen when time slows down like that isn't, in itself, fun for her, but the reactions people have when their senses catch up to what she's already done sometimes make it worth it. "I hope you do have a real face, so I can see it twist." She has a suspicion. "Got you."
Audrey Basque	Calling it an unfair fight is kind of oversimplifying it. But gamers thrive on those, and Audrey may not look or sound like that kind of person but that's just because she really, really doesn't want word to get around she gets kind of... competitive about games. She could probably go pro, if she was willing to sink that kind of time into it. So when Petra snickers, it's-- the whole weight isn't lifted, but it helps. For now. For tonight. The weight'll be back, and once this is over she'll... Worry about that when it's over. She spent most of the encounter trying to get a feel for how the taunt mechanics work, how much heat the shields on her ship could take, how maneuvering in her tank of a ship ends up working. Considering she came out of the fight at all, she did pretty well! And Petra engaging Cavern 1... She can't just let her win THIS round, can she? She'd managed, barely, to bait a shot from Cavern 2's absolutely unbalanced railgun to clip Cavern 1, but to her dismay even that wasn't able to bring it down. "That one is SO reading our inputs, that's unfair!" In the end they couldn't win outright, but they survived the timer and the bosses left. That almost feels like an insult, coming from the game, but... it had been pretty fun. And NOTHING WENT WRONG. That's the key part. It was just a fun gaming night! ... without an awkward morning after. Audrey still can't bring herself to smile, though, which makes her tinted mask and visor a blessing. With the tint part of the cosmetic turned to 90%, it's only the hint of her mouth and eyes that bleed through. With the open team comms still open, she addresses Bonfire directly. "That wasn't too bad. But I wonder what the deal with their squadron is... is there something in the lore that makes them so good?" It's probably just event stuff, though... "I bet they're bosses we're only expected to beat much later."
KNK	Violet's little magnetic transmitter-receiver has an engraved design on it. She tried to figure out how to make metal engraving animation, but that turned out to be physically impossible, so she settled for a mostly accurate rendition of herself delivering rude gestures with a HA HA and LOSER This is what happens when she has access to industrial machinery and is unsupervised for several minutes.
Angela	"Understood." Angela tells Audrey. "Quasar. ... CAN you take the helmet off?" No need to talk about her backstory and all that. A bad Elite habit and Angela just has to retrain herself back when she was deliberately hiding information from even her friends because she didn't know if they'd be friends of hers after they learned the truth. It's a bit frustrating, honestly, since it was a bit of a relief to be able to just speak properly without any sort of hesitancy--but now she's back at it. ... But she can just choose to not talk, of course, that's simple and easy to do. Imposible Reaction time is something Angela has at least some mitigating capacity to deflect, though her fighter is relatively simple--two whole subweapons are entirely locked! Which means she bnroadly has a twin pair of rapid-firing laser bolts designed for swarms that can be blasted apart quickly or be focused to put heavy fire on a singular mech but well--decidedly stuck firing ahead. She tries to go after Cavern One but soon is pushed back into blasting at the drones. Her hands can only move so fast, but she can observe Petra and... ...admire it. She stops shooting for two minutes to admire the Beuaty of Ash's movements or, rather, the still frame of its presence mid-motion...Before in real time, going back to firing at drones with just a second of a half of a break between shots. Petra said something would likely go wrong. What is it? What is the STORY here. What is THE LORE? It's being obsufucated from her, quietly hidden in item descriptions she simply doesn't have the time to seek out. They were invited here, for reasons she still doesn't know to do something she hasn't been told. If Petra's right, it can't just be for the purpose of gaming, right? Every time she tries to go toe-to-toe with Cavern-1 by taking advantage of her Time-Curse, she gets pumelled and her own competitive streak is stirred. If this is a world that is both virtual where you can log into from afar and also walk there on foot... The Library tells her to reach out. So she does, taking one hand away from the console and peering through her cockpit shield to press her middle finger against her thumb. And she-- snaps Within the cockpit, hidden by dark purple tint of the Blackberry's windows--there is a sudden flash of light, causing Angela to squint-- --and when she opens her eyes, she's holding a page in front of her. Drones pummel her left side and it vanishes away as Angela decides to try reading it later, shifting her focus to not getting shot down in the meanwhile.
Redshift Operators	The defense... is actually going spectacularly. Without trying to secure a kill on the huge seemingly-unbeatable bosses, but with some effort taken to slow them down, everyone can earn a spectacular little stream of rewards. What would normally be a small battle becomes a long, drag-out slog for them, and plinking damage takes a bar or two off their hull, shifting them to more cautious behaviors... They've got some distance. It's almost a win, of sorts. Rose's signal cleanup gets... words. Syllables. The pacing of human speech. It's garbled, badly-malformed, maybe generated improperly. But it's there. And Audrey... "Sterile 1's run into Cavern a few times. They're just generated different. I don't know what their..." Her breathing is heavy with effort. "Their deal is... But we might be winning this time. We might drive them back...!" Petra's maneuvers across the surface of the Silhouette are elegant and effective and, importantly, between antagonizing Cavern (and getting away with it) and dancing on the raid-boss, she does get one hot reddit post. Just the one. Using the agility equivalent of /dance on a raid boss earns you that. A page comes into being. We'll get to the details of that later. That unknown signal resolves. ---------------------------------------- \| /!\CAUTION/!\ \| \| GRADE [MIDNIGHT] ENEMY STRIKE FORCE \| \| --- \| \| ASV "SILHOUETTE" \| \| "CAVERN" SQUADRON" \| \| RVK "LANTERN" \| ---------------------------------------- Uh oh. Maybe there's something meant to terminate a survival sequence if it goes on too long. Maybe the Silhouette and her Squadron were just vanguards to begin with. But there's no FTL outlet when the RKV Lantern smashes into the station's shields, halting there for agonizing minutes as its inertia is arrested. It's enough time for everyone to get away, and maybe enough time for someone to try to maneuver the station or break up the RKV to minimize damage...
Redshift Operators	A brief aside from the available game-lore: A Relativistic Kill Vehicle was a simple, hypothetical concept. If human society advanced beyond Earth, it only stood to reason that so would war. And, at the end of the day, the simplest and the most effective way for people to wage war has always been the same as the simplest and most effective way for people to perform any act of violence: throwing. In the science fiction setting of Interstellar Frontiers Online 2, this was possibly more true than ever. Relativistic Kill Vehicles were simply any piece of mass that used any consistent thrust, and the infinite resource of space's namesake, to accelerate to some less-insubstantial portion of the speed of light, and impact their chosen target. The Company, of course, maintained its own arsenal, typically contained in orbit around black holes. In the lore of Interstellar Frontiers Online, this was because The Company (or rather, its futuristic manifestation) was a grand military powerhouse, the absolute defender of all humanity in the frontier. However, some NPCs could be found to rarely note that, by claiming residence on one such RKV (legally classified as a spaceship), one could declare certain relativistic adjustments to the passage of time. After all, anyone properly residing on such a vessel would soon experience relativistic time distortion effects, thus elongating one's tax obligations through something similar to a time-space "leap year".
Redshift Operators	To say that the weapon, a massive ship used like a relativistic battering ram, would be dangerous, is simple. But what happens next is more confusing. In the delay that the players and outworlders bought for them, the transmission station... emitted a POWERFUL, densely-encrypted signal, right at the end. And then the shield shuts off. The shields fade. "Wait--" Sterile 2's voice speaks up. "That wasn't fair...!" And the RKV's halted inertia is no longer halted. It tears through the station and fractures into a shotgun blast of fractional-C shrapnel, blasting off into the void -- and everyone in the vicinity is very, very likely hit with a massive electromagnetic pulse and physical shockwave that sends them spinning. The first signal anyone's going to hear after that is a soft voice. "Bullshit. Bullshit. That was bullshit. That was complete bullshit. Sterile 2 reporting. Green fireworks, coordinates follow. Sterile 2 to all elements..." The second signal anyone gets, we'll get to in a moment.
KNK	Rose's Nothing Special isn't doing terribly, all things considered. She did lose most of her armament, but it was meant to be used in a limited engagement. The canister she passes along for Bonfire's hold is, likewise, nothing surprising. Like the tagger Violet stuck to Cavern 2, it's a tracking and communication device. As a bonus, it'll automatically try to get onto available networks to phone Rose if otherwise out of range. If Cavern Squadron doesn't like being tracked, they probably won't like this, but Rose wasn't asking them.